Entries by Hayley Bedard

An in-depth analy­sis pub­lished by The Marshall Project, in part­ner­ship with The Guardian, finds that 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark deci­sion in Gregg v. Georgia, the American death penal­ty has failed to deliv­er on the mea­sures its archi­tects out­lined. Drawing on data gath­ered by University of North Carolina pro­fes­sor Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center, the study exam­ined more than 9,000 death sen­tences imposed since states redrafted…

On June 15, 2026, the United States Supreme Court declined to con­sid­er the appeal of Texas death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Charles Flores, whose death sen­tence was obtained through the use of a hyp­no­tized pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness. Mr. Flores has spent more than 25 years on death row for a mur­der he main­tains he did not com­mit. His con­vic­tion relied on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a neigh­bor who iden­ti­fied him — for the first time, at tri­al — only after being hyp­no­tized by police. Mr. Flores…

\Update 9:17pm ET, June 11, 2026: [The U.S. Supreme Court denied Alabama’s appeal. Mr. Lee’s exe­cu­tion will not pro­ceed as sched­uled.] On June 9, 2026, an Alabama fed­er­al dis­trict judge​“per­ma­nent­ly enjoined” state offi­cials from using nitro­gen gas to exe­cute death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Jeffery Lee after find­ing that the state’s nitro­gen exe­cu­tion pro­to­col vio­lates the Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. Judge Emily Marks issued her…

On May 28, 2026, an Alabama fed­er­al dis­trict judge ruled that nitro­gen gas exe­cu­tions are con­sti­tu­tion­al and do not vio­late the Eighth Amendment’s pro­tec­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. In the first fed­er­al bench tri­al exam­in­ing nitro­gen gas as a method of exe­cu­tion, U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks found that death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Jeffery Lee​“failed to prove that [Alabama’s gas] Protocol caus­es more than​‘the nec­es­sary suffering involved…

In a June 1, 2026, op-ed in The New York Times, Maria DeLiberato, senior coun­sel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Capital Punishment Project, offers a first-per­­­son account of the May 21 attempt by Tennessee to exe­cute her client, Tony Carruthers — and the hour of suf­fer­ing she wit­nessed before Governor Bill Lee called off his exe­cu­tion. Ms. DeLiberato, who joined Mr. Carruthers’ legal team just two months before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion date, describes entering the…

In the May 2026 episode of 12:01 The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Dr. Naomi Yavneh Klos (pic­tured), Dean of the Honors College at the University of New Mexico, and a promi­nent schol­ar of the Holocaust. Dr. Yavneh Klos is a found­ing mem­ber of the Jews Against Gassing Coalition, a New-Orleans area group formed to oppose the use of nitro­gen gas as a method of exe­cu­tion in Louisiana. She joins DPI​’s pod­cast dur­ing Jewish American Heritage…

On May 13, 2026, the city of Austin, Texas agreed to pay $35 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to four men — three sur­viv­ing and one deceased — who spent years under the shad­ow of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, accused of an infa­mous quadru­ple mur­der that DNA proved none of them com­mit­ted. The set­tle­ment, which must still be approved by the Austin City Council, came less than three months after a Travis County judge declared Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Forrest Welborn, and Maurice Pierce…

On May 14, 2026, an Oklahoma judge grant­ed bail for for­mer death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Richard Glossip near­ly three decades after his arrest and ini­tial con­vic­tion. He was released hours lat­er. In her order, Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai set Mr. Glossip’s bail at $500,000, and set con­di­tions for mon­i­tor­ing and behav­ior if he post­ed bail ahead of his retri­al. Mr. Glossip was released after post­ing bail and told reporters out­side the jail that he is​“just really…