Entries by Hayley Bedard

On August 5, 2025, a group of ten Arkansas death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing a new state law that autho­rizes their exe­cu­tion using nitro­gen gas. Act 302, which Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law in March 2025, went into effect on the same day the law­suit was filed. The pris­on­ers’ law­suit argues that the new law is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it vio­lates the state constitution’s sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. All ten pris­on­ers includ­ed in the…

A promi­nent busi­ness exec­u­tive and mem­ber of a larg­er coali­tion of over 500 glob­al busi­ness lead­ers is call­ing on California Governor Gavin Newsom to com­mute all death sen­tences in California to life with­out parole. In a July 2025 op-ed, Matthew Stepka, a mem­ber of Business Leaders Against the Death Penalty, calls California’s death penal­ty sys­tem a fail­ure of both jus­tice and fiscal responsibility. > ​“If any com­pa­ny or prod­uct I eval­u­at­ed had an error rate…

- Update August 5, 2024: All (mul­ti­ple) media wit­ness­es who observed the exe­cu­tion report that Mr. Black was observed repeat­ed­ly lift­ing his head,​“sigh­ing” and​“groan­ing” dur­ing his exe­cu­tion, at one point say­ing​“It’s hurt­ing so bad.” He demon­strat­ed​“clear, audi­ble signs of dis­tress” for sev­er­al min­utes.​“It was unan­i­mous among all of us that he was in dis­tress.” He was declared dead at 10:43 CT. 
On July 31, 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court…

Sandra Hemme walked free from a Missouri prison in July 2024 after 43 years behind bars for a mur­der she did not com­mit; how­ev­er, her release only came after a judge threat­ened state Attorney General Andrew Bailey with con­tempt of court for try­ing to keep Ms. Hemme incar­cer­at­ed despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence of her inno­cence. Now 65 years old, Ms. Hemme has filed a law­suit against the city of St. Joseph, Missouri and eight police offi­cers involved in her case for malicious…

In a July 10, 2025, order, Marion County Alabama Circuit Court Judge Talmage Lee Carter issued a tem­po­rary stay of exe­cu­tion for David Lee Roberts because of con­cerns regard­ing his men­tal com­pe­ten­cy. Mr. Roberts was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on August 21. Judge Carter’s order tasked the Alabama Department of Mental Health with deter­min­ing whether Mr. Roberts has a​“ratio­nal under­stand­ing” about why the state will exe­cute him. In his order, Judge Carter wrote, “[t]he issue…

On July 18, 2025, the Davidson County Chancery Court issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion requir­ing the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) to ensure that Byron Black’s implant­ed heart device (car­diac implantable elec­tron­ic device, or CIED) is switched off just ahead of his exe­cu­tion by a car­diac spe­cial­ist or qual­i­fied tech­ni­cian work­ing under such super­vi­sion. In June 2025, coun­sel for Mr. Black filed a motion for a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion, explaining that…

On July 16, 2025, Smith County District Judge Austin Reeve Jackson set an exe­cu­tion date of October 16, 2025 for Robert Roberson, a man with a strong inno­cence claim who has a habeas cor­pus peti­tion pend­ing at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA). Judge Jackson, after hear­ing argu­ments from both defense coun­sel for Mr. Roberson and attor­neys from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, ruled that there was no legal basis for not sign­ing an exe­cu­tion order.​“It doesn’t…

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond is fac­ing accu­sa­tions that he broke a writ­ten agree­ment that would have freed for­mer death row pris­on­er Richard Glossip from prison more than two years ago, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments filed in mid-July 2025. The rev­e­la­tion cen­ters on email exchanges from April 2023, where AG Drummond, in a thread with Don Knight, coun­sel for Mr. Glossip, agreed to a plea deal that would have result­ed in Mr. Glossip’s imme­di­ate release after more…