Entries by Hayley Bedard

A first-of-its-kind lawsuit challenging California’s death penalty on systemic racial grounds has cleared an initial hurdle at the California Supreme Court and is now headed to an evidentiary hearing in Sacramento Superior Court, according to reporting from the Washington Post. The suit, filed by the ACLU, the Legal Defense Fund, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the Equal Justice Society, and the Office of the State Public Defender, argues that California’s capital punishment statute is…

On August 25, 2026, the Ohio Parole Board recommended, following a full clemency hearing a week earlier, that Governor Mike DeWine grant death-sentenced prisoner Tyrone Noling a commutation and parole eligibility beginning January 1, 2029. Mr. Noling had asked the parole board for a full pardon, but the board, in a split vote, instead recommended a sentence commutation and parole eligibility. Mr. Noling has spent 30 years on Ohio’s death row for the murders of an elderly couple but has always…

In a letter issued ahead of the execution of James Duckett and Dominick Occhicone on July 28, 2026, the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops “wish[ed] to remind Catholics of the teaching of our Church against the use of the death penalty in situations — like our own — where bloodless means are sufficient to punish offenders and protect public safety.” Noting “Florida’s alarming rate of executions” and the state’s efforts to expand the death penalty’s scope, the Conference writes to “invite a…

On July 30, 2026, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey set a new execution date for Jeffery Lee after the state’s unsuccessful attempt to execute him using nitrogen gas in June. Gov. Ivey set Mr. Lee’s execution by lethal injection for September 17, 2026, just over three months after an Alabama federal judge permanently blocked the state from using its nitrogen gas protocol. This new execution date came after U.S. District Judge Emily Marks, the same judge who enjoined the state from using nitrogen gas…

Missouri has carried out executions at one of the highest rates of any state since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume 50 years ago, according to a new analysis of death sentences issued between 1972 and 2025. The Marshall Project, drawing on data compiled by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and the Death Penalty Information Center, found that Missouri has executed more than half of the people it has sentenced to death. Nationally…

In a July 17, 2026, op-ed, former Barack Obama advisor Van Jones and former George W. Bush appointee David Safavian jointly argue that courts continue to accept discredited forensic techniques as reliable evidence, contributing to wrongful convictions across the country. The authors contrast the confident forensic experts seen on television crime dramas with real-world courtrooms where they say, “phony forensics” methods — microscopic hair comparison, bite mark analysis, and blood-stain pattern…

On July 20, 2026, attorneys for death-sentenced prisoner Darrell Hines, in a new filing, asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to conditionally stay Mr. Hines’ August 13 execution date because the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) has refused to identify whether it will use the same physician involved in the state’s failed execution attempt of Tony Carruthers. Pointing to an extreme risk of pain and suffering, as evidenced by Mr. Carruthers’ botched execution, counsel for Mr. Hines has…