Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The leg­is­la­ture doesn’t want cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the exec­u­tive branch can’t obtain exe­cu­tion drugs, and Nebraska pros­e­cu­tors have moved for­ward this year with the pan­dem­ic-delayed cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing tri­als of two defen­dants sep­a­rate­ly con­vict­ed of a mur­der out of a voyeuris­tic true-crime nov­el. The state, writes Associated Press reporter Grant Schulte in a May 9, 2021 analy­sis, is​“still wed­ded to the idea of exe­cut­ing pris­on­ers, just not…

Posthumous foren­sic test­ing of evi­dence in the case of Ledell Lee (pic­tured), who was exe­cut­ed in Arkansas in 2017, has found DNA from an uniden­ti­fied male on a bloody club used to kill Debra Reese 29 years ago and on a blood-soaked shirt that was wrapped around the weapon. The DNA results, released by the Innocence Project and the ACLU on April 30, 2021, raise addi­tion­al trou­bling questions about…

A fed­er­al appeals court has reversed the death sen­tence of an African-American Georgia death-row pris­on­er who was rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by a defense lawyer noto­ri­ous for his his­to­ry of sub­stan­dard rep­re­sen­ta­tion and racial bias in death-penalty…

In an over­whelm­ing bipar­ti­san vote, the Texas House of Representatives has passed a bill that ends death-penal­­­ty lia­bil­i­ty under the state’s con­tro­ver­sial​“law of par­ties” for felony accom­plices who nei­ther kill nor intend­ed that a killing take place and were minor par­tic­i­pants in the con­duct that led to the death of the vic­tim. Currently, Texas law makes any par­tic­i­pant in a felony crim­i­nal­ly liable for the acts of every­one else involved in the…

One day shy of the tenth anniver­sary of the state’s last exe­cu­tion, the South Carolina leg­is­la­ture, frus­trat­ed by the state’s inabil­i­ty to obtain exe­cu­tion drugs, approved a bill that would autho­rize putting pris­on­ers to death in the elec­tric chair or…

A for­mer Utah defense lawyer has received a $250,000 set­tle­ment after suing Weber County for alleged­ly fir­ing him in retal­i­a­tion for his pub­lic crit­i­cism of the county’s refusal to prop­er­ly fund a death-row prisoner’s cap­i­tal appeal and its interference…

Finding​“brazen mis­con­duct” by a pros­e­cu­tor who with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence from the defense and then secret­ly served as the tri­al judge’s law clerk in the case, a Midland County, Texas judge has rec­om­mend­ed that death-row pris­on­er Clinton Young (pic­tured) be granted…

Kentucky pros­e­cu­tors have dropped cap­i­tal charges against two defen­dants who had chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty for crimes com­mit­ted by offend­ers younger than 21 years old. On April 21, 2021, pros­e­cu­tors announced that they will no longer seek the death penal­ty against Efrain Diaz, Jr. and Justin Delone Smith, two of the three ado­les­cents accused of the 2015 killing University of Kentucky student…

The his­to­ry of racial oppres­sion and lynch­ing in the U.S. South has, civ­il rights advo­cate Martin Luther King III writes,​“too fre­quent­ly … gone untold and unad­dressed.” But, he says in an April 17, 2021 op-ed in USA Today, Virginia​’s repeal of the death penal­ty​“shows us what is pos­si­ble when we con­front this country’s racist past, and acknowl­edge how racism per­me­ates this country’s…

As a state leg­is­la­tor in 1981, Jim Petro (pic­tured) sup­port­ed a bill to rein­state Ohio​’s death penal­ty after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s pre­vi­ous cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute. Later, as Ohio Attorney General, he super­vised 19 exe­cu­tions in the state. Since then, his views have changed and he recent­ly co-authored an op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch urg­ing the leg­is­la­ture to repeal the state’s…