Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

One week before the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment intends to put three pris­on­ers to death, two of the sched­uled exe­cu­tions remain in doubt after rul­ings by fed­er­al courts in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. The sched­uled January 12, 2021 exe­cu­tion of Lisa Montgomery (pic­tured, left) appeared to be back on after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed a dis­trict court rul­ing that had vacat­ed her exe­cu­tion date. At the same time, the scheduled January…

Romell Broom (pic­tured), who sur­vived a botched exe­cu­tion attempt in September 2009, has died on Ohio​’s death row of sus­pect­ed COVID-19 com­pli­ca­tions. He was 64 years old and had spent more than half his life…

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has amend­ed its pro­fes­sion­al code of ethics to pro­hib­it mem­bers from design­ing exe­cu­tion cham­bers or spaces to be used for tor­ture, including long-term…

Saying the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) act­ed unlaw­ful­ly in reset­ting Lisa Montgomery​’s exe­cu­tion for January 12, 2021, a fed­er­al judge in Washington has for a sec­ond time blocked efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to put to death the only woman on fed­er­al death row. In an order issued late in the day on December 24, 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss agreed with Montgomery’s lawyers that the BOP lacked legal authority to…

Fueled by at least 16 COVID-19 deaths and a record-low num­ber of new death sen­tences caused by the can­ce­la­tion or post­pone­ment of cap­i­tal tri­als, the pop­u­la­tion of U.S. death row dipped 3.4% in the year span­ning October 2019 through September 2020, accord­ing to the lat­est quar­ter­ly death-row cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund…

The Texas Supreme Court has unan­i­mous­ly ruled that the state’s comp­trol­ler had no author­i­ty to deny death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown​’s appli­ca­tion for com­pen­sa­tion after a tri­al court had declared him…

Two men sched­uled for exe­cu­tion by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in January 2021 are among the fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers who have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Lawyers for Corey Johnson (pic­tured, left) and Dustin Higgs (pic­tured, below), announced that they had been noti­fied by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) that their clients had con­tract­ed the coro­n­avirus, amidst an outbreak…

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the human rights body charged with over­see­ing Western Hemisphere nations’ com­pli­ance with human rights oblig­a­tions, has called on the United States to halt the sched­uled January 12, 2021 exe­cu­tion of Lisa…

A for­mer Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er has been freed, one month after the tri­al court barred his retri­al because of​“egre­gious” pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct by the county…

Death sen­tences reached their low­est lev­el in the mod­ern era and exe­cu­tions hit a gen­er­a­tional low despite an his­tor­i­cal­ly anom­alous fed­er­al exe­cu­tion spree, accord­ing to the 2020 Year End Report from the Death Penalty Information Center. As the nation grap­pled with a dead­ly pan­dem­ic and expe­ri­enced a reawak­en­ing on racial jus­tice, most states put tri­als and exe­cu­tions on hold. At the same time, ignor­ing pub­lic health warn­ings and buck­ing national trends,…