Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Lawyers for Texas death-row prisoner Rodney Reed (pictured) presented four days of testimony in a Bastrop County courthouse in an attempt to establish his innocence of the murder of Stacey Stites, as activists, religious leaders, and members of Reed’s family rallied in support of his case. The hearing, which is expected to take two weeks, began on July 19, 2021, with Reed’s case for innocence. His lawyers presented evidence that Reed, who is Black, was having an affair with Stites, who is…

In a video interview posthumously released on the anniversary of the first modern exoneration of a Florida death-row prisoner, former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan has called for abolition of the state’s death penalty. “I believe that the death penalty should absolutely not be a punishment delivered by the State of Florida, or for that matter, neither any place in the United States or the world,” Kogan said. The interview was recorded by attorney and filmmaker Ted Corless…

After clashing with Biden administration officials over the propriety of using statements obtained through torture from Guantánamo detainees, Army Brigadier General Mark S. Martins (pictured), the chief prosecutor in the Guantánamo Military Commissions trials, will retire from the military on September 30, 2021. Martins, who had served as the commissions’ chief prosecutor throughout the Obama and Trump administrations, abruptly submitted papers on July 7 providing notice of his early…

In a unanimous ruling, the California Supreme Court has limited the reach of a controversial voter initiative that was intended to accelerate judicial review of death-penalty cases. In In re: Friend, decided June 28, 2021, the court ruled that provisions of Proposition 66 that strictly limit a death-row prisoner’s ability to file successive challenges to his or her capital conviction or death sentence do not bar a capital petitioner from filing a second or subsequent petition that raises new…

As the first court hearing on Pervis Payne’s claim that his death sentence must be vacated because of his intellectual disability was about to get underway, prominent civil rights leaders and relatives of a civil rights icon added their voices to efforts to free the Tennessee death-row prisoner, who has consistently asserted his innocence. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded in 1957 by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists, participated in a…

In a ruling rendered along partisan lines without benefit of oral argument, the United States Supreme Court has overturned the decision of a federal appeals court that had vacated the death sentence imposed on an Alabama death-row prisoner whose trial lawyers had failed to obtain expert assistance to present evidence of his intellectual disability. By a vote of 6 – 3, with all members of the conservative bloc of justices voting for the prosecution, the Court on July 2, 2021 summarily reversed the…

Studies have consistently found that a system of criminal law in which the death penalty is available as a punishment is far more expensive than a system in which the most severe punishment is life without parole or a long prison term. Now, as the number of murder exonerations mounts across the United States, a previously hidden cost is emerging: the cost of liability for police and prosecutorial misconduct associated with the wrongful use or threatened use of the death penalty. The innocence…

At 3:00 a.m. Central time on July 14, 2020, after his notice of execution had expired, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) strapped Daniel Lewis Lee to an execution gurney in the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. With the execution chamber curtains closed, correctional officials left him there for four hours while federal prosecutors filed pleadings in a federal appeals court to lift a stay of execution they had forgotten was still in effect. When the stay was lifted at 6:36…

Major U.S. editorial writers have criticized the Biden administration’s June 30, 2021 announcement of a temporary moratorium on executions while the Department of Justice reviews Trump administration changes to U.S. execution practices, saying that the pause for a limited policy review fails to fulfill the President’s campaign pledge to work to end the federal death penalty. In editorials between July 5 and July 8, the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and CNHI Pulitzer…

The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected the efforts of Arizona prosecutors to expedite the executions of two death-row prisoners and further limit appeals judicial review of legal issues in their cases. The Arizona Attorney General’s office had sought to shorten judicial review in the cases of death-row prisoners Frank Atwood and Clarence Dixon after learning that the shelf life of the drugs it intended to use in the executions would expire before the executions could be carried out. Arizona…