Entries by Hayley Bedard

On April 7, 2026, a Cuyahoga County judge vacat­ed the death sen­tence of Charles Maxwell and ordered his resen­tenc­ing to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. After an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, the court found that Mr. Maxwell suf­fered from delu­sion­al dis­or­der, caused by sev­er­al trau­mat­ic brain injuries, at the time of the crime for which he was sen­tenced to death. According to data from the Ohio Attorney General’s office, Mr. Maxwell’s resen­tenc­ing marks the…

With weeks left before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on May 21, 2026, coun­sel for Tennessee death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Tony Carruthers has asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to order DNA test­ing that they argue could prove their client’s inno­cence. On April 9, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed an emer­gency motion seek­ing DNA test­ing​“on spe­cif­ic pieces of pro­ba­tive phys­i­cal evi­dence, most of which has nev­er been test­ed, and which will like­ly point to…

Ohio’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem has come into sharp focus with the release of two reports that exam­ine four decades of the state’s death penal­ty record and draw stark­ly dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions about the future of Ohio’s death penal­ty. On March 30, Ohioans to Stop Executions (OTSE) pub­lished Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Confronting the Wrongful Conviction Crisis in the State of Ohio, doc­u­ment­ing the record of mis­takes and errors that result­ed in 12 exon­er­a­tions.​“The death…

On March 30, 2026, law­mak­ers in Israel passed the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law by a vote of 62 to 48, mak­ing Israel one of few democ­ra­cies to expand cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in recent years. The law man­dates death by hang­ing for offens­es clas­si­fied as​“ter­ror­ism relat­ed” — and as writ­ten, applies exclu­sive­ly to Palestinians. The new law also requires that sen­tences must be car­ried out with­in 90 days of a final rul­ing. UN experts have warned that under international…

On April 2, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court ordered new brief­ing that will extend past the war­rant dead­line for James Duckett’s exe­cu­tion. The order was issued in con­nec­tion with defense counsel’s request for fur­ther analy­sis of DNA evi­dence in Mr. Duckett’s case. Counsel for Mr. Duckett released a state­ment fol­low­ing the Court’s order, not­ing they​“are relieved that the court has inter­vened to halt this exe­cu­tion and allow time to con­sid­er Mr. Duckett’s request for the…

James Broadnax, a Texas death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er, is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on April 30, 2026. He was con­vict­ed in 2009 by a Dallas County jury for the mur­ders of two music pro­duc­ers, Stephen Swan and Matthew Butler, who were shot and killed out­side their record­ing stu­dio in 2008. On March 19, 2026, a lit­tle more than a month before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, attor­neys for Mr. Broadnax filed a new appeal and a sworn affi­davit from his code­fen­dant and cousin Demarius…

On March 12, 2026, a diverse group of voic­es filed ami­cus curi­ae briefs in sup­port of Charles Flores (pic­tured), a Texas death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er, urg­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case. 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. The briefs were filed by a…

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…