Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission has suspended an African-American judge who declared the state’s death penalty statute unconstitutional, accusing her of unprofessional conduct and anti-death penalty bias. In a 109-page complaint filed on April 6, 2021, the Commission charged Judge Tracie Todd (pictured), a criminal court trial judge in the Birmingham Division of the Jefferson County Circuit Court, “with multiple incidents of abuse of judicial power and abandonment of the judicial role…

As the United States undergoes an awakening on racial injustices in policing and the judicial process, commentators and public policy advocates are calling for a reimagining of public safety and criminal punishment that rejects the reflexive imposition of harsh punishment as an instrument of social control. In an April 9, 2021 op-ed in The Washington Post and a series of April 12 essays by the Brennan Center for Justice, policy experts say it is time for the nation to view the U.S. legal…

Fewer executions were carried out across the world in 2020 than at any time in a decade and new death sentences fell by more than a third, according to a new report by Amnesty International. It was the third consecutive year in which confirmed executions reached a 10-year low, and the sixth year in a row in which confirmed executions declined, Amnesty said. The human rights organization’s report, Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions 2020, released April 21, 2021, said that Amnesty had…

A controversial psychiatrist who repeatedly testified that severely mentally ill death-row prisoners were faking their symptoms and were competent to be executed has been barred from medical practice in Florida. On March 31, 2021, the Florida Department of Health issued an emergency restriction on the medical license of Alan J. Waldman, M.D. (pictured), prohibiting him from practicing as a medical doctor until the impaired practitioner program for the state’s Board of Medicine provides notice…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has overturned the death sentence of the nation’s longest-serving death-row prisoner, 45 years after he was first sent to death row. In an unpublished opinion issued on April 14, 2021, the TCCA held that Raymond Riles (pictured), originally sentenced to death by a Harris County jury on December 11, 1975, is entitled to a new sentencing hearing. The court ruled that Riles had been unconstitutionally sentenced to death in his 1978 retrial when the trial…

Executions for drug offenses plummeted worldwide during 2020, according to a new report by the global drug-policy monitor Harm Reduction International (HRI). Three countries — China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran — carried out 30 confirmed executions for non-violent drug crimes over the course of the year, the group reported in its annual analysis, The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2020. The total, the April 7, 2021 report said, was the lowest since HRI began reporting on…

At a time in which the Arizona Department of Corrections is facing criticism for crumbling infrastructure, substandard medical care, and understaffing, the department has spent $1.5 million to purchase the lethal-injection drug pentobarbital from an undisclosed source. The exorbitant price, experts say, is a function of the questionable use of the drug for non-medical purposes and the secretive nature of the transaction. Records obtained by The Guardian show that, in October 2020, Arizona…

The Nevada State Assembly has passed a bill that would abolish the state’s death penalty and resentence the prisoners currently on its death row to life without parole. It was the first time any death-penalty abolition bill had been reported out of committee and considered by either house of the Nevada legislature. AB 395 passed the Assembly on April 13, 2021 by a vote of 26 – 16, with all Democrats supporting the measure and all Republicans opposing it. The bill advances to the state senate…

After more than 40 years on Florida’s death row, Sonny Boy Oats (pictured), one of the nation’s longest serving death-row prisoners, has been found ineligible for the death penalty. On April 2, 2021, a Marion County trial court vacated Oats’ death sentence and resentenced him to life in prison, accepting a stipulation between prosecutors and the defense that Oats is intellectually disabled. In February 2020, Ric Ridgway, Chief Assistant in the Florida Fifth Circuit State Attorney’s office…

Nearly seven years after the botched execution of Joseph Wood put the death penalty on hold in Arizona, state officials are seeking to resume executions. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced on April 6, 2021 that he is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to set a briefing schedule and issue execution warrants for death-row prisoners Clarence Dixon and Frank Atwood. At present, no state but Texas has any pending executions scheduled for 2021. The Attorney General’s announcement drew…