Entries by Hayley Bedard

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…

Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, has filed a law­suit in the Davidson County Chancery Court chal­leng­ing the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, assert­ing it vio­lates her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights and con­flicts with her reli­gious beliefs. The state’s new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col relies sole­ly on pen­to­bar­bi­tal to induce res­pi­ra­to­ry and car­diac arrest, rather than the for­mer three-drug cock­tail. Ms. Pike argues that Tennessee’s lim­i­ta­tion on clergy,…

An autop­sy of Richard Djerf, who was exe­cut­ed in Arizona in October 2025, has renewed con­cerns about the state’s lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and the state’s efforts to address long­stand­ing exe­cu­­­tion-relat­ed con­cerns. Mr. Djerf was con­vict­ed for the September 1993 mur­ders of four mem­bers of the Luna fam­i­ly in Phoenix. The autop­sy, con­duct­ed by Pinal County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. John Hu, estab­lished for the first time that med­ical personnel encountered…

On January 17, 2006, California exe­cut­ed Clarence Ray Allen — the last per­son put to death by the state. Two decades lat­er, California’s death row pop­u­la­tion has fall­en to 580 pris­on­ers, down from its peak near 750 in the mid-2010s. In the time since Mr. Allen’s exe­cu­tion, the death penal­ty in California has seen sus­tained scruti­ny as con­cerns with racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, inno­cence, and costs con­tin­ue to grow. Governor Gavin Newsom has placed a moratorium on…

The United States car­ried out 47 exe­cu­tions in 2025, and Florida car­ried out 19 — the high­est num­ber in state his­to­ry and more than dou­ble its pre­vi­ous mod­ern record, accord­ing to a year-end report from Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP). Executions in Florida — which aver­aged one exe­cu­tion every 16 days from February 2025 through December 2025 — account­ed for 40% of the 47 exe­cu­tions nation­wide, mak­ing Florida a clear out­lier in the use of the death…

On December 5, 2025, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro issued an exe­cu­tion reprieve for Richard Roland Laird, the same day the Department of Corrections Secretary Laurel Harry signed a Notice of Execution for January 2, 2026. In issu­ing the same-day reprieve, Gov. Shapiro act­ed on his promise to main­tain an exe­cu­tion mora­to­ri­um in Pennsylvania. In February 2023, Gov. Shapiro announced he would con­tin­ue his pre­de­ces­sor Tom Wolf’s halt on exe­cu­tions, and called upon the…

The Death Penalty Information Center’s new report, The Death Penalty in 2025: Year End Report, released on December 15, gen­er­at­ed wide­spread nation­al and inter­na­tion­al cov­er­age. Despite an uptick in exe­cu­tions this year, media cov­er­age focused large­ly on the report’s core find­ings: new death sen­tences remain near his­toric lows, juries are increas­ing­ly reluc­tant to impose death sen­tences, and the death penal­ty con­tin­ues its steady decline across most of the…

The U.S Supreme Court announced on December 15, 2025, that it will hear the appeal of Mississippi death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Terry Pitchford, who has argued his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were vio­lat­ed because of race dis­crim­i­na­tion dur­ing jury selec­tion. Mr. Pitchford was sen­tenced to death near­ly two decades ago for his role in the shoot­ing death of Reuben Britt. At the cen­ter of Mr. Pitchford’s case is Doug Evans, a Mississippi dis­trict attor­ney whose con­duct has drawn…