Foreign Nationals

Fewer coun­tries are using the death penal­ty for drug offens­es, but accord­ing to a new glob­al report, exe­cu­tions increased in those that did and took place in pro­ceed­ings char­ac­ter­ized by author­i­tar­i­an­ism and secrecy.

Defendants of col­or and for­eign nation­als who are intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly like­ly to be sen­tenced to death, a Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of cas­es involv­ing intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled defen­dants suggests.

For sec­ond time in eight days, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has reversed course after ini­tial­ly reject­ing a death-row prisoner’s claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and has resen­tenced the pris­on­er to life. The deci­sions, both involv­ing for­eign nation­als and both sup­port­ed by local pros­e­cu­tors, marked the sixth and sev­enth time that Texas courts have vacat­ed death sen­tences imposed on intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled cap­i­tal defen­dants since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 struck down the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly restric­tive def­i­n­i­tion of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty the state had been using.

NEWS (3/​12/​20): Citing a 14-year delay by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in bring­ing the case to tri­al, a fed­er­al dis­trict court in Texas has dis­missed a fed­er­al cap­i­tal mur­der indict­ment against a Salvadoran man charged with killing two Honduran immigrants.

NEWS: July 6—Pennsylvania has joined the list of states that have not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in more than 20 years. Five death-penal­ty states (Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming) and the U.S. mil­i­tary now have not con­duct­ed an exe­cu­tion in at least two decades. More than half of the states in the U.S. (26), as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. mil­i­tary either do not have the death penal­ty or have not exe­cut­ed any­one in at least 20 years. See States with no recent…

Two for­eign nation­als who were sen­tenced to death in unre­lat­ed cas­es will receive new tri­als after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of low­er court rul­ings over­turn­ing their con­vic­tions. Jose Echavarria (pic­tured, left), a Nevada pris­on­er orig­i­nal­ly from Cuba, and Ahmad Issa (pic­tured, right), an Ohio pris­on­er orig­i­nal­ly from Jordan, each were award­ed new tri­als by fed­er­al appel­late court deci­sions in 2018. The states peti­tioned the Supreme Court seek­ing review of the cas­es, but on May 20, 2019, the Court denied the peti­tions, allow­ing the low­er court rulings…

In the lat­est pod­cast episode of Discussions with DPIC, mem­bers of the DPIC staff dis­cuss key themes from the 2018 Year End Report. Robert Dunham, Ngozi Ndulue, and Anne Holsinger delve into the major death-penal­ty trends and news items of the year, includ­ing the ​“extend­ed trend” of gen­er­a­tional lows in death sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tions, elec­tion results that indi­cate the decline will like­ly con­tin­ue, and the pos­si­ble impact of Pope Francis’s change to Catholic teach­ing on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. They explore the rea­sons for reduced death-penal­ty usage, high­light­ing the sto­ries of people…

United Nations human rights offi­cials have urged the gov­ern­ment of the United States to halt the immi­nent exe­cu­tion of a Mexican nation­al who was tried and sen­tenced to death in Texas in vio­la­tion of U.S. treaty oblig­a­tions. Texas is sched­uled to exe­cute Roberto Moreno Ramos (pic­tured) on November 14, in an action an inter­na­tion­al human rights court has said would vio­late the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Agnes Callamard, the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, and Seong-Phil Hong, the Chair-Rapporteur of the Council’s…