Entries by Hayley Bedard

Xavier Becerra, the Democratic front-run­n­er in California’s 2026 guber­na­to­r­i­al race, has pledged to extend Governor Gavin Newsom’s mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions if elect­ed in November. This is a marked shift from his pre­vi­ous record as the state’s attor­ney gen­er­al, when his office defend­ed cap­i­tal con­vic­tions and pur­sued new death sen­tences. While in office, AG Becerra said he con­sid­ered cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a legit­i­mate option for crime vic­tims, and during his…

A foren­sic DNA ana­lyst whose tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny helped secure the 2002 con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Ronald​“Jeffery” Prible has now dis­avowed that tes­ti­mo­ny, adding new weight to Mr. Prible’s long-stand­ing inno­cence claim in a case marked by seri­ous alle­ga­tions of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. In an August 28 dec­la­ra­tion filed as part of con­tin­ued efforts to over­turn Mr. Prible’s con­vic­tion, DNA expert William Watson wrote that devel­op­ments in forensic…

In a September 2, 2026, op-ed pub­lished in the Topeka Capital-Journal, Roger Werholtz, who served as Kansas Secretary of Corrections from 2003 to 2010, calls on Governor Laura Kelly to com­mute the sen­tences of the nine men on Kansas’ death row to life with­out parole. Writing as a for­mer cor­rec­tions offi­cial with expe­ri­ence in both Kansas and Colorado, Mr. Werholtz notes that the state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1965, yet​“Kansas has not been plagued by crime…

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…

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…

On August 11, 2026, for­mer North Carolina death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Frank Chambers, a Black man, was resen­tenced to two con­sec­u­tive life sen­tences in con­nec­tion with the 1992 shoot­ing deaths of an elder­ly white cou­ple in Rowan County. Evidence of sig­nif­i­cant mis­con­duct emerged in Mr. Chambers’ case, and pros­e­cu­tors ulti­mate­ly con­ced­ed that this evi­dence taint­ed the fair­ness of Mr. Chambers’ death sen­tence and led to his resen­tenc­ing. According to his counsel,…

UPDATE: Nathalie Greenfield, an attor­ney for Ms. Andrew, told KGOU that her team would be fil­ing an appeal to the United States Supreme Court with­in the next 90 days. On August 14, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit declined to recon­sid­er Brenda Andrew’s case and the total­i­ty of the evi­dence in deter­min­ing whether her tri­al was fun­da­men­tal­ly unfair — leav­ing in place a pan­el rul­ing that found gen­der-biased evi­dence at her tri­al did not…

On August 11, 2026, the Parliament of Lebanon passed leg­is­la­tion for­mal­ly abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. The country’s abo­li­tion marks the first coun­try in the Middle East to abol­ish the prac­tice and the sec­ond coun­try among the League of Arab States to do so (Djibouti abol­ished in 1995). A major­i­ty of the mem­bers in Lebanon’s 128-seat Parliament vot­ed in favor of this leg­is­la­tion, with Hezbollah’s par­lia­men­tary bloc vot­ing against it. The leg­is­la­tion will now be…

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…

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…