Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Arizona reportedly has ​“refur­bished” its gas cham­ber and has spent more than $2,000 to acquire ingre­di­ents to exe­cute pris­on­ers with cyanide gas, the same gas used by the Nazis to mur­der more than one mil­lion men, women, and chil­dren during the…

California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the case of Kevin Cooper, who has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence in the 1983 quadru­­ple-mur­der for which he was sen­tenced to death. Newsom’s May 28, 2021 exec­u­tive order appoints the law firm Morrison and Foerster, LLP as Special Counsel to the California Board of Parole Hearings and directs the firm to ​“con­duct a full review of the tri­al and appel­late records in [Cooper’s]…

In the first Racial Justice Act case to reach a hear­ing since the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the state legislature’s attempt to retroac­tive­ly repeal the land­mark law, a North Carolina judge has ordered state pros­e­cu­tors to pro­duce decades of data on jury selec­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es. On May 20, 2021, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons (pic­tured) grant­ed a request from the legal team rep­re­sent­ing death-row pris­on­er Hasson…

Lawyers for fed­er­al death row pris­on­er Dylann Roof argued to a fed­er­al appeals court that the avowed white supremacist’s con­vic­tions and death sen­tences in his tri­al for the 2015 mur­ders of nine Black church­go­ers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina should be over­turned because the judge pre­sid­ing over his case uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly per­mit­ted Roof to rep­re­sent him­self while mentally…

Saying that ​“the pri­vate sec­tor can no longer be a silent bystander in the soci­ety it inhab­its,” for­mer Unilever CEO Paul Polman, has called on busi­ness lead­ers around the world to take a stand against the death…

A com­mit­tee cre­at­ed by the California state leg­is­la­ture to study the state’s penal code and pro­pose improve­ments in the law has rec­om­mend­ed that California repeal its death penal­ty and expe­di­tious­ly reduce the size of its death…

In a fail­ure of trans­paren­cy one leg­isla­tive leader described as ​“unfath­omable,” the State of Texas put Quintin Jones (pic­tured) to death on May 19, 2021 with­out any media wit­ness­es present to observe the exe­cu­tion. It was the first time in the 571 exe­cu­tions con­duct­ed by Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its death penal­ty statute in 1976 that no media witnesses were…

An Idaho tri­al court has stayed the sched­uled June 2, 2021 exe­cu­tion of Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pic­tured), halt­ing state pros­e­cu­tors’ efforts to put the hos­pice-bound ter­mi­nal­ly ill pris­on­er to death before his stage‑4 can­cer can take his life and state offi­cials can con­sid­er his petition for…

In a pri­ma­ry elec­tion wide­ly con­sid­ered a ref­er­en­dum on reform pros­e­cu­tors, incum­bent Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner eas­i­ly secured a vic­to­ry against for­mer Philadelphia homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor Carlos Vega. Krasner won the May 18, 2021 elec­tion on a plat­form of con­tin­u­ing the reform he began four years ago when he was first elect­ed: eschew­ing use of the death penal­ty, ini­ti­at­ing sys­temic crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms, and end­ing mass incarceration.

A bill to abol­ish Nevada​’s death penal­ty died with­out a vote in the state sen­ate after Governor Steve Sisolak (pic­tured) declared on May 13, 2021 that ​“there is no path for­ward” to ban the prac­tice. Shortly there­after, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, one of two Las Vegas pros­e­cu­tors to hold lead­er­ship posi­tions in the leg­is­la­ture, said that leg­is­la­tors had failed to reach a con­sen­sus on pos­si­ble amend­ments to the bill, ending…