Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In two long-await­­­ed deci­sions that will alter the land­scape of Florida’s death row, the Florida Supreme Court has lim­it­ed the reach of a land­mark rul­ing that over­turned the state’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against death sen­tences imposed after a non-unan­i­­­mous jury vote for death. The court’s January 2020 deci­sion in State v. Poole had raised the specter that the court might rescind orders that had over­turned the death sen­tences of more than 100 Florida…

The range of meth­ods avail­able to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to car­ry out exe­cu­tions could be expand­ed under a new Department of Justice reg­u­la­tion pub­lished on November…

In the November 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Gretchen Engel (pic­tured, left), Executive Director of North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL), joins Ngozi Ndulue (pic­tured, below), Senior Director of Research and Special Projects at DPIC, for a dis­cus­sion of their orga­ni­za­tions’ recent reports on race and the death penal­ty. This fall, DPIC released Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death…

Public sup­port for the death penal­ty is at its low­est lev­el in a half-cen­­­tu­ry, with oppo­si­tion high­er than any time since 1966, accord­ing to the 2020 annu­al Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes about…

Despite its defeat at the polls on November 3, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is press­ing for­ward with efforts to con­duct an his­tor­i­cal­ly unprece­dent­ed num­ber of lame duck exe­cu­tions and in announc­ing new fed­er­al cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions that it will not be in position…

South Carolina has issued a death war­rant to exe­cute Richard Moore (pic­tured) on December 4, 2020, but, his lawyers say, the state has refused to tell him how it intends to…

On November 20, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court is sched­uled to con­fer­ence the case of Calvin McMillan, one of thir­­­ty-two Alabama death-row pris­on­ers whose death sen­tences were imposed by tri­al judges who over­rode jury rec­om­men­da­tions to sen­tence the defen­dants to life. McMillan has asked the Court to declare the prac­tice uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and two jurors who vot­ed for life in judi­cial over­ride cas­es and three for­mer state court judges in…

In a dra­mat­ic devi­a­tion from his­tor­i­cal prac­tices, the Trump Administration is poised to con­duct the first fed­er­al exe­cu­tions dur­ing a lame-duck pres­i­den­cy in more…

Lawyers for fed­er­al death-row pris­on­er Orlando Hall (pic­tured), who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on November 19, 2020, have filed a motion to stay his exe­cu­tion based upon evi­dence that his death sen­tence was a prod­uct of pervasive racial…

Two death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers in Kansas have filed a fed­er­al law­suit alleg­ing that the state’s pol­i­cy of auto­mat­ic soli­tary con­fine­ment for death-row pris­on­ers is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The two pris­on­ers, Sidney Gleason and Scott Cheever, have been held in iso­la­tion for 14 and 12 years, respec­tive­ly. Seven of the ten peo­ple on Kansas’ death row have been kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more…