Entries by Hayley Bedard

In com­ments to reporters on September 30, 2025, Pope Leo XIV said that sup­port­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was incon­sis­tent with being pro-life. The Pope was respond­ing to ques­tions about Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich’s plan to hon­or Senator Dick Durbin for his work on immi­grant human rights issues. The announce­ment drew crit­i­cism from sev­er­al American bish­ops who object­ed based on Sen. Durbin’s sup­port for legalized abortion. ​“Someone who says,​‘I’m against abor­tion’ but…

On September 23, 2025, North Carolina law­mak­ers approved and for­ward­ed to Governor Josh Stein for sig­na­ture House Bill 307 — also known as​“Iryna’s Law” — which pro­pos­es sweep­ing changes to the state’s crim­i­nal laws. HB 307 impos­es stricter pre­tri­al release con­di­tions, requires invol­un­tary men­tal health eval­u­a­tions for defen­dants under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, short­ens the time­line for cap­i­tal case appeals, and pro­vides an alter­na­tive to the cur­rent method of…

With just weeks remain­ing before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, attor­neys for 72-year-old Samuel Lee Smithers are appeal­ing the dis­missal of their motion filed September 19, 2025, argu­ing that exe­cut­ing an elder­ly per­son vio­lates both Florida and the U.S. Constitutions’ pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and fails to meet any valid peno­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. On September 22, 2025, the Hillsborough County Circuit Court denied Mr. Smithers’ request for an…

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia estab­lished that the Eighth Amendment pro­hibits exe­cut­ing peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The Court lat­er clar­i­fied that rigid IQ cut­offs were not per­mis­si­ble and also required states to con­sid­er mean­ing­ful evi­dence of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, includ­ing sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly valid expert tes­ti­mo­ny and adap­tive func­tion­ing deficits. Despite this unequiv­o­cal constitutional protection,…

In late August 2025, the First District Court of Appeals of Ohio ruled that Hamilton County pros­e­cu­tors can­not use pri­or wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny in their retri­al of Elwood Jones, who was on Ohio’s death row for 27 years until he was grant­ed a new tri­al in December 2022. Mr. Jones was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of Rhoda Nathan in a Blue Ash, Ohio, hotel in 1994, despite con­sis­tent­ly main­tain­ing his inno­cence. In 2022, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court…

When Chloe Beck was called for jury duty in ear­ly 2018, she ini­tial­ly viewed it as a poten­tial break from work. But she did not antic­i­pate that the case — involv­ing a nan­ny charged with the stab­bing deaths of two chil­dren — would have last­ing effects on her men­tal health. As an alter­nate juror in the sev­en-week tri­al, Ms. Beck was required to look at crime scene pho­tographs and hear tes­ti­mo­ny from the vic­tims’ par­ents. For Ms. Beck, the expe­ri­ence proved difficult to…

After spend­ing more than three decades behind bars for a crime he did not com­mit, Robert Melock was issued a Certificate of Innocence (COI), with a court for­mal­ly clear­ing his name and order­ing his record expunged. On April 21, 2025, the Circuit Court of the 19^th Judicial Circuit issued Mr. Melock the cer­tifi­cate fol­low­ing his December 2023 release from prison after 34 years of incar­cer­a­tion. His case is emblem­at­ic of the many prob­lems known to result in wrongful death…

On August 5, 2025, a group of ten Arkansas death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing a new state law that autho­rizes their exe­cu­tion using nitro­gen gas. Act 302, which Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law in March 2025, went into effect on the same day the law­suit was filed. The pris­on­ers’ law­suit argues that the new law is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it vio­lates the state constitution’s sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. All ten pris­on­ers includ­ed in the…