Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Georgia Supreme Court is con­sid­er­ing a chal­lenge to the unique­ly high bur­den of proof the state impos­es on cap­i­tal defen­dants and death-row pris­on­ers to deter­mine whether they are inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. On March 23, 2021, the court heard argu­ment in a case brought by Rodney Young, a death-row pris­on­er who asserts that Georgia’s harsh stan­dard uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sub­jects defen­dants with intellectual disability…

Describing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as an ​“inher­ent­ly flawed” and ​“abhor­rent prac­tice,” United Nations human rights experts have called on President Joe Biden to take action to end the death penal­ty in the…

Saying “[t]here is no place today for the death penal­ty in this com­mon­wealth, in the South, or in this nation,” Governor Ralph Northam (pic­tured) signed his­toric leg­is­la­tion mak­ing Virginia the 23^rd U.S. state and the first in the South to abolish capital…

The United States Supreme Court has grant­ed a Department of Justice request filed dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of President Donald Trump to review a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion that over­turned the death sen­tences imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pic­tured) for his role in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ing that killed three peo­ple and injured more than 250…

A group of busi­ness lead­ers have launched a cam­paign call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson (pic­tured) announced the ini­tia­tive at the vir­tu­al South By Southwest fes­ti­val on March 18, 2021, say­ing, ​“The death penal­ty is bro­ken beyond repair and plain­ly fails to deliv­er jus­tice by every rea­son­able mea­sure. It is marred by cru­el­ty, waste, inef­fec­tive­ness, dis­crim­i­na­tion and an unac­cept­able risk of error. … By speak­ing out at this crucial…

The move­ment to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Ohio has gained addi­tion­al steam as for­mer Governor Robert Taft and for­mer state attor­neys gen­er­al Jim Petro and Lee Fisher (pic­tured, left to right) called on the Ohio state leg­is­la­ture to end the state’s death…

A New York City judge has released three men from prison after 24 years impris­on­ment for mur­der, find­ing that a high-rank­ing pros­e­cu­tor in the Queens County District Attorney’s office delib­er­ate­ly con­cealed excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence while pur­su­ing the death penal­ty against a teenage…

More than a dozen for­mer Alabama pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and state bar pres­i­dents have filed briefs in a Birmingham court call­ing for a new tri­al for Alabama death-row pris­on­er Toforest Johnson (pic­tured, cen­ter, with fam­i­ly mem­bers). The extra­or­di­nary fil­ings join Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr in sup­port­ing efforts by lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights, the University of California-Berkeley Law School Death Penalty Clinic, and the…

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has void­ed the con­vic­tions of a sec­ond death-row pris­on­er who was unlaw­ful­ly tried and con­demned in the Oklahoma state courts for an offense that occurred on Native American tribal…

In the United States, the respon­si­bil­i­ty for defin­ing what is a crime and enforc­ing the crim­i­nal laws rests pri­mar­i­ly with the states. That fact, New York Times colum­nist Charles Blow (pic­tured) writes, makes action at the state lev­el “[t]he true fron­tier of crim­i­nal jus­tice equal­i­ty.” From cash bail to the death penal­ty, Blow says, “[i]f the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is to move toward racial equal­i­ty and lib­er­a­tion this change will have to start with the…