Entries by Hayley Bedard

In a July 8, 2026 op-ed pub­lished in the Kansas Reflector, Celeste Dixon, a retired U.S. Navy reservist and National Park Service employ­ee who lives in Pawnee County, Kansas, calls on Governor Laura Kelly to com­mute the sen­tences of the nine men on Kansas’ death row to life with­out parole. Writing from per­son­al expe­ri­ence, Ms. Dixon notes that near­ly 40 years ago, her moth­er, Marguerite, was mur­dered in Texas; almost 19 years ago, the indi­vid­ual who killed her mother was…

On July 7, 2026, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee told mem­bers of the media that the state’s sched­uled exe­cu­tions will pro­ceed with­out any changes to the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, despite the state’s failed attempt to exe­cute Tony Carruthers in May. Gov. Lee stat­ed that the exe­cu­tion team fol­lowed the prop­er pro­to­col dur­ing the attempt­ed exe­cu­tion and that the prob­lem was with locat­ing a suit­able vein for an IV line, rather than with the pro­to­col itself.​“I think, as we…

In a let­ter dat­ed June 25, 2026, a group of nine Tennessee Republican sen­a­tors called on Governor Bill Lee to com­mis­sion an inde­pen­dent review of the failed exe­cu­tion of Tony Carruthers, to order the cor­rec­tion of​“every defi­cien­cy” found in this review, and to make infor­ma­tion about the exe­cu­tion team pub­licly avail­able​“so that the Department [of Corrections’] readi­ness can be inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.” While the sen­a­tors main­tain their sup­port for the…

Florida exe­cut­ed Dusty Ray Spencer on June 25, 2026, mak­ing him the old­est per­son put to death in the state since the rein­state­ment of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1976. Mr. Spencer, 74, was the ninth per­son exe­cut­ed in Florida in 2026, fol­low­ing a record of 19 exe­cu­tions in 2025. The state has sched­uled two exe­cu­tions for July: Dennis Sochor, 74, is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on July 14 for the 1981 mur­der of Patricia Gifford in Broward County; Dominick Occhicone, 80, is…

Two for­mer California death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers, Ernest Dykes and Curtis Ervin, have filed law­suits against Alameda County, accus­ing the District Attorney’s office of​“set[ting] out to rig the juries” in their cap­i­tal cas­es. Both men were released from prison after their death sen­tences were reduced because of the dis­cov­ery of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct dur­ing each of their jury selec­tions in the 1990s. The law­suits allege that the Alameda County…

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…