Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

An his­tor­i­cal­ly aber­rant six-month fed­er­al exe­cu­tion spree came to a close after mid­night on January 16, 2021 when an African-American man who was sched­uled to die on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.​’s birth­day was put to death by pri­vate exe­cu­tion­ers hired in a secret no-bid…

On Martin Luther King Day, DPIC looks at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s views on capital…

Legislators in the Virginia House and Senate are poised to attempt a repeal of its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute, as Governor Ralph Northam (pic­tured) announced that he would spon­sor a bill to end the commonwealth’s death…

For the sec­ond time in less than five weeks, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has exe­cut­ed a death-row pris­on­er who like­ly was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, with­out afford­ing him judi­cial review to deter­mine his eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the death penal­ty. Corey Johnson (pic­tured) was pro­nounced dead from lethal injec­tion at 11:34 p.m. on January 14, 2021, the 12^th fed­er­al pris­on­er exe­cut­ed in six months and the fifth in the tran­si­tion peri­od between Donald Trump’s defeat in the November 2020…

After a series of rul­ings by the United States Supreme Court sum­mar­i­ly vacat­ed two stays of exe­cu­tion and denied attempts to rein­state two oth­ers, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment exe­cut­ed death row pris­on­er Lisa Montgomery (pic­tured) on January 13, 2021. Montgomery, the only woman on fed­er­al death row, was the first woman exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in more than 67 years, the first per­son exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in 2021, and the 11^th pris­on­er put to death in a…

Eddie Lee Howard, Jr., con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death based on the false foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny of a since dis­graced pros­e­cu­tion expert wit­ness, has been exon­er­at­ed after near­ly 26 years on Mississippi​’s death row. He is the 174^th for­mer death-row pris­on­er exon­er­at­ed in the U.S. since 1973 and the sixth in…

Ohio has banned the death penal­ty for defen­dants who were severe­ly men­tal­ly ill at the time of the offense. On January 9, 2021, Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) signed into law House Bill 136, which pro­hibits impos­ing the death penal­ty on or car­ry­ing it out against indi­vid­u­als whose severe men­tal ill­ness at the time of the offense sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired their judg­ment, capac­i­ty, or abil­i­ty to appre­ci­ate the nature of their…

The fed­er­al government’s his­tor­i­cal­ly aber­rant exe­cu­tion spree has been fraught with irregularities and ​“has tram­pled over an array of bar­ri­ers, both legal and prac­ti­cal,” accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive report by the non-prof­it news organization,…

Calling the death penalty ​“inef­fec­tive, racial­ly based, hyp­o­crit­i­cal and inhu­mane,” St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell (pic­tured) has renewed his pledge to nev­er autho­rize a cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion. In a December 23, 2020 op-ed in the St. Louis American, Bell urged ​“all pros­e­cu­tors in Missouri who cur­rent­ly con­sid­er the death penal­ty an option to…

Witness to Innocence, the nation­al orga­ni­za­tion of U.S. death-row exonerees, has released a series of short videos under the tag “#ImLivingProof,” fea­tur­ing the sto­ries of men and women who had been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. The series, pro­duced by film­mak­er Martin Schoeller with fund­ing from the Art for Justice Fund, attempts to per­son­al­ize the dan­gers of the death penal­ty by show­ing the pub­lic liv­ing proof that inno­cent peo­ple are sentenced to…