Entries by Hayley Bedard

On March 2, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Alabama’s appeal of a rul­ing by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that reversed and remand­ed Michael Sockwell’s case on the grounds that the tri­al pros­e­cu­tor vio­lat­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by inten­tion­al­ly remov­ing Black jurors. The Court’s denial of review clears a path for Mr. Sockwell to receive a new tri­al, some 36 years after a judge first sen­tenced him to death. A November 2025 federal…

The New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board pub­lished an arti­cle on March 13, 2026, con­demn­ing use of the death penal­ty in the coun­try as secre­tive, arbi­trary, and unjust. Relying heav­i­ly on research and data main­tained by the Death Penalty Information Center, the board describes the events of 2025, with its sharp increase in exe­cu­tions, as a​“dark new peri­od” in the nation’s his­to­ry. The board attrib­ut­es much of the surge to Florida, which alone car­ried out 19 executions in…

A March 9, 2026, com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing for Andre Thomas, a death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er in Texas, has been post­poned to an unspec­i­fied date because of con­cerns that Mr. Thomas is too men­tal­ly ill to be trans­port­ed to his com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing and he could not be re-exam­­­ined by the State’s expert. Mr. Thomas was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in April 2023; how­ev­er, his exe­cu­tion date was with­drawn in March 2023, cit­ing con­cerns with his severe men­tal ill­ness (SMI) and…

DPI​’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. Why it mat­ters: Although women rep­re­sent just 2% of death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers, they have unique issues and have often faced gen­der bias­es at every stage of their pros­e­cu­tion. — Fewer than 50 women are sen­tenced to death in the United States (October 2025). — Women…

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment says it plans to trans­fer​“almost all” for­mer fed­er­al death row pris­on­ers whose sen­tences were com­mut­ed by President Biden to the nation’s most noto­ri­ous and restric­tive prison with­in the next sev­er­al weeks, accord­ing to a court fil­ing dat­ed February 4, 2026. In a two-page notice filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department informed Judge Timothy J. Kelly that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) intends to move…

Among the more than 100 mil­lion Americans watch­ing the Super Bowl on Sunday, Charles Flores (pic­tured) watched from a 9‑by-12-foot cell in Livingston, Texas, mark­ing his 27^th Super Bowl on death row for a crime he has main­tained he did not com­mit. In a pod­cast inter­view with Pablo Torre, a jour­nal­ist and sports­writer, Mr. Flores sat down at the Polunsky Unit in Livingston to dis­cuss his love of the Dallas Cowboys, watch­ing the Super Bowl on death row, the intri­ca­cies of his…

When Lance Shockley was exe­cut­ed in Missouri in October 2025, he request­ed the pres­ence of his daugh­ter, an ordained min­is­ter, in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber as his spir­i­tu­al advis­er. The Missouri Department of Corrections (MDOC) denied his request, and Mr. Shockley was exe­cut­ed. His case rep­re­sents one exam­ple of how states have applied the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 rul­ing in Ramirez v. Collier, a deci­sion that acknowl­edged the reli­gious rights of death-sentenced…

Two women inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to a 1991 mur­der case in Alabama have pub­licly opposed the intend­ed exe­cu­tion of Charles​“Sonny” Burton, a man both the state and his attor­neys acknowl­edge did not fire the fatal shot. Priscilla Townsend, who served on the jury that sen­tenced Mr. Burton to death, and Tori Battle, whose father Doug Battle was killed dur­ing the rob­bery in ques­tion, have each writ­ten op-eds urg­ing Governor Kay Ivey to grant clemen­cy. On January 22, 2026, the…

In the January 2026 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Aramis Ayala, Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution. Ms. Ayala made his­to­ry in 2016 as Florida’s first Black state attor­ney and lat­er became the first Black woman in Florida to be nom­i­nat­ed for state attor­ney gen­er­al by a major par­ty. In the pod­cast, she dis­cuss­es her deci­sion to not seek the death penal­ty, the reac­tion to her deci­sion, and the…