Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Nevada Department of Corrections (NVDOC) intends to execute death-row prisoner Zane Floyd with a three- or four-drug combination that has never been used before to put a prisoner to death. In a proposed execution protocol released on June 10, 2021, NVDOC said its execution cocktail would be drawn from six possible drugs, depending upon availability. While acknowledging ongoing challenges to the legality and constitutionality of NVDOC’s planned execution process, Las Vegas trial judge…

Today, the DPIC office is closed in observance of Juneteenth, which celebrates the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States. As we commemorate this holiday, we remember the historical relationship between slavery, lynching, Jim Crow segregation, and the death penalty and their use as instruments of social control to maintain racial hierarchy. Our September 2020 report, Enduring Injustice, delves into the historical use of capital punishment, providing context for the racial…

The South Carolina Supreme Court has vacated death warrants for two death-row prisoners scheduled to be executed this month, staying their executions until the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC) complies with a newly enacted state law requiring that it offer condemned prisoners the option of being executed by firing squad. In separate orders issued on June 16, 2021 in the cases of Brad Sigmon, who faced a June 18 execution, and Freddie Owens, who was scheduled to be executed June…

As the Department of Justice filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court seeking reinstatement of the death sentence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bombing, the White House press office issued a statement stressing the independence of the Department over the cases it is pursuing and asserting that President Joe Biden has not backed away from his campaign promise to work to end the federal death penalty. On June 14, 2021, Department of Justice lawyers filed the government’s…

As South Carolina and Arizona prepare to resume executions using gruesome methods of the past, Alabama prosecutors say the state is nearly ready to perform executions using a new, untested method, nitrogen hypoxia. In court filings on June 8, 2021, in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, the Alabama Attorney General’s office said the Alabama Department of Corrections “is nearing completion of the initial physical build for the nitrogen hypoxia system and its safety…

A new documentary about the case of Carlos DeLuna, a likely innocent man who was executed in Texas in 1989, premieres June 14, 2021 at the Tribeca Film Festival. The Phantom, based on an investigation by Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and his students that culminated in the book, The Wrong Carlos, tells the story of the flawed investigation into the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, a single mother who was killed during a robbery of the convenience store where she worked. DeLuna not…

The Georgia Supreme Court has denied a constitutional challenge to the state’s statutory requirement that a capital defendant must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she is intellectually disabled before being declared ineligible for the death penalty. In an 8 – 1 ruling issued on June 1, 2021, the Georgia high court affirmed the conviction and death sentence imposed on Rodney Young. Young had argued that requiring a capital defendant to meet the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard — the…

Raymond Riles (pictured), the nation’s longest serving death-row prisoner, has been resentenced to life. On June 9, 2021, Harris County, Texas District Judge Ana Martinez imposed the life sentence via a Zoom teleconference after county prosecutors determined that Riles was incompetent to participate in a capital resentencing trial and, if again sentenced to death, would never be mentally competent to be executed. The 71-year-old Riles was originally sentenced to death on December 11, 1975…

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (pictured) has filed motions in a Florida trial court seeking to block DNA testing that the local elected State Attorney had agreed to and a judge had granted in two 45-year-old Orange County death penalty cases. In pleadings filed June 1 and June 2, 2021 in the Florida Ninth Circuit Court, Moody objected to DNA testing for Tommy Zeigler and Henry Sireci, both of whom were sentenced to death in 1976 and have long asserted their innocence. Six of Ziegler’s…

Building on what they describe as growing momentum to end capital punishment and greater awareness of racial justice concerns, a coalition of Ohio African-American church and legislative leaders are putting their weight behind bipartisan legislation to repeal the state’s death penalty. In a May 18, 2021 press conference at the state capitol in Columbus, the Ohio Council of Churches and the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus called on the legislature to pass House Bill 183 and Senate Bill 103…