Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

After six tri­als marred by pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and racial prej­u­dice, draw­ing a scathing rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court, for­mer Mississippi death-row pris­on­er Curtis Flowers (pic­tured with the ankle mon­i­tor that had kept him under house arrest) has been…

In the clos­ing days of its 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the California leg­is­la­ture passed a trio of racial jus­tice reform bills expect­ed to reduce the influ­ence of racial, eth­nic, and socioe­co­nom­ic bias in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in the state with the country’s largest death…

At a time in which the United States as a whole and indi­vid­ual states and coun­ties have con­tin­ued their long-term move­ment away from the death penal­ty, the fed­er­al government’s cur­rent exe­cu­tion spree has estab­lished it as an out­lier juris­dic­tion out of step with the prac­tices of the nation as a…

When Truth is All You Have, a new mem­oir by Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey (pic­tured) tells the sto­ry of what many con­sid­er to be the birth of the mod­ern inno­cence move­ment. The book, writ­ten with for­mer USA Today nation­al edi­tor Philip Lerman, and released in July 2020, describes McCloskey’s per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al evo­lu­tion as he cre­at­ed Centurion Ministries in 1983, the first-ever orga­ni­za­tion dedicated to…

The Mississippi Supreme Court has grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Eddie Lee Howard, Jr. (pic­tured), find­ing that the com­bi­na­tion of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid bite-mark evi­dence used to con­vict him and new DNA evi­dence enti­tled him to a new tri­al in the 1992 mur­der and alleged rape of an 84-year-old white…

More pris­on­ers in the United States have died in the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic than have been exe­cut­ed in the coun­try in past two decades, new prison data shows, and more California death-row pris­on­ers have been killed by the virus than have been exe­cut­ed in the state since…

A Florida tri­al court has freed a for­mer death-row pris­on­er after local pros­e­cu­tors said new DNA evi­dence had proven his inno­cence of the rape and mur­der for which he was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death 37 years…

Over the objec­tions of Native American lead­ers across the coun­try, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment on August 26, 2020 exe­cut­ed Lezmond Mitchell (pic­tured), the sole Native-American pris­on­er on fed­er­al death row. Mitchell, a Navajo cit­i­zen, became the first Native American exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for a crime com­mit­ted against a mem­ber of his own tribe on tribal…

As the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment began to car­ry out the sec­ond round of exe­cu­tions it has sched­uled for 2020, autop­sy results from the first round of exe­cu­tions in July sug­gest to a ​“vir­tu­al med­ical cer­tain­ty” that fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers will experience ​“excru­ci­at­ing pain” while they are being put to death by lethal injection with…

Ruling in one of the most sen­sa­tion­al­ized tri­als of the ear­ly 2000s, the California Supreme Court has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Scott Peterson for the mur­ders of his preg­nant wife, Laci, and their unborn son in December 2002. The court upheld Peterson’s con­vic­tions for the two…