NEWS (11/9): A Buncombe County, North Carolina trial judge has re-sentenced former death-row prisoner James Morgan to life without possibility of parole, removing him from the state's death row. After consultation with the vicitim's family, the county district attorney agreed to drop the death penalty as a result of neuropsychological testing showed that Morgan had suffered from severe brain damage since childhood that significantly contributed to his conduct at the time of the offense.

NEWS (11/8): The Arkansas Supreme Court has reversed the death sentence imposed on Kenneth Reams, ruling that his trial lawyer was ineffective when he failed to investigate and present mitigating evidence that could have persuaded the jury to spare Reams's life. The appeals court also directed the Pine Bluffs trial court to consider a claim brought by Reams's appeal lawyers that the overwhelmingly white jury pool from which the jury in his case was selected did not constitute a fair cross-section of the community. 

NEWS (11/6): Mississippi prosecutors have announced that they will not seek the death penalty in resentencing proceedings for Jeffrey Havard, who was convicted and sentenced to death in a "shaken baby" case based upon questionable and since recanted forensic testimony. Havard's death sentence was overturned by a state trial court in September. He continues to appeal his conviction. 

NEWS (11/5): Former death-row prisoner Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin was exonerated in Florida, as Seminole County prosecutors dropped all charges against him. He is the 164th person wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death to have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1973, and the 28th exonerated in Florida. See Innocence. 

NEWS (11/5): Two California death-row prisoners at San Quentin State Prison died of suspected suicides over the course of the weekend. Andrew Urdiales, who was sentenced to death by an Orange County judge less than a month ago, was found dead in his cell late Friday, November 2. Late on Sunday, November 4, prison authorities found Virendra Govin, who was sentenced to death in December 2004, unresponsive in his cell.

NEWS (11/2): The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers, who has challenged his conviction based upon evidence that his trial prosecutor discriminatorily struck jurors from service in his case because they were black. Flowers has already been granted new trials three times because of misconduct by the same prosecutor, and courts have already found that the prosecutor discriminatorily struck black jurors in two of those cases. See U.S. Supreme Court.

NEWS (11/1): Tennessee has executed Edmund Zagorski, the 20th prisoner executed in the United States in 2018. Zagorski opted for execution by electric chair, rather than a three-drug protocol that he considered torturous. It was the first electric-chair execution in Tennessee since 2007 and the first in the United States since 2013. See 2018 Execution List.

NEWS (10/31): The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has denied the appeal of Texas death-row prisoner Charles Raby, who had sought review of his trial lawyer’s ineffectiveness for presenting as a defense witness a psychologist who diagnosed Raby as a psychopath. The court said presenting a doctor who calls your client a psychopath is not “an extraordinary circumstance” that justifies reopening the case.

NEWS (10/29): South Dakota has executed Rodney Berget. Berget was the first person executed in South Dakota since 2010. He was the 148th death-row prisoner in the United States to waive his appeals and be executed since executions resumed in 1977. Ten percent of all prisoners executed in the United States waived their appeals. See Execution Database.

NEWS (10/25): The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the unconstitutional bare-majority death sentence imposed on William Davis. The court acknowledged that the Seminole County trial judge had unconstitutionally sentenced Davis to death after five of the jurors had recommended a life sentence and that both the U.S. and Florida Supreme Court decisions in Hurst v. Florida and Hurst v. State, which declared Florida's death-sentencing statute unconstitutional, applied to Davis's case. However, it ruled that during his state post-conviction proceedings, Davis had irrevocably waived his right to challenge the unconstitutional death sentence and could not obtain relief from the constitutional violation on appeal. See Florida death-row appeals decided in light of Hurst.

NEWS (10/22): Wilbert Lee, who was exonerated in 1975 after having been twice wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in Florida for a murder he did not commit, has died. He was 83. Mr. Lee and Freddie Pitts—both African American—were sentenced to death for the murders of two white men. No physical evidence linked them to the murders. After their convictions, another man confessed to the crime, the eyewitness recanted her false accusations, and the state Attorney General admitted that the state had unlawfully suppressed evidence. Governor Ruben Askew granted both men a complete pardon based on their innocence. See Innocence.

NEWS (10/19): The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has issued a stay of execution to Kwame Rockwell, who was scheduled to be executed October 24. The court ruled that Rockwell had raised "substantial doubt" as to his competency to be executed and directed the trial court to "appoint at least two mental health experts" to evaluate his competency. See Outcomes of Death Warrants in 2018.

NEWS (10/19): The Texas Supreme Court has withdrawn its prior order declining to review a lower court decision that had required the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to disclose the identity of the company that supplied the drugs the state used to carry out executions in 2014. The court granted the corrections department's motion to rehear the issue and has scheduled oral argument for January 23, 2019.

NEWS (10/19): The Florida Supreme Court has denied relief in two more cases in which defendants were sentenced to death under unconstitutional sentencing statutes.

The court ruled that the constitutional violations in the cases of Rodney Lowe and Daniel O. Conahan were harmless because the sentencing jury had unanimously recommended the death penalty in both cases. See Florida Death Penalty Appeals Decided in Light of Hurst.

NEWS (10/17): The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld three death sentences, including one in which the Philadelphia District Attorney's office had conceded that the death sentence should be overturned.

In the cases of Lenwood Mason and George Lopez, the court summarily affirmed the orders of trial courts denying the prisoners’ post-conviction petitions.

In the case of Lavar Brown, the court rejected the parties joint application to grant penalty relief to Brown on the grounds that his trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance during the sentencing phase of his trial, saying that "a district attorney’s concession of error is not a substitute for independent judicial review." The Philadelphia District Attorney's office had successfully opposed Brown's post-conviction appeal before the trial court, but the new prosecutorial administration agreed with Brown that his lawyer had been ineffective. Chief Justice Saylor dissented from the court's decision.

NEWS (10/12): The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review has ruled that the civilian lawyers representing Guantánamo detainee Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, charged in the USS Cole bombing, should not have been permitted to resign from the case in response to discovering eavesdropping devices in confidential attorney-client meeting rooms and should have returned to the case when ordered to do so by the military judge presiding over pretrial proceedings.

NEWS (10/11): The Washington Supreme Court has declared the state's death penalty unconstitutional. In a unanimous decision, the court said, "The death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner." It converted all death sentences to life imprisonment.

NEWS (10/11): Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam issued a temporary reprieve of the state's scheduled October 11 execution of Edmund Zagorski, halting it until at least October 21. At the time of the Governor's action, a Tennessee federal district court and a federal appeals court had each issued orders temporarily halting the execution and a stay motion and petition for review were pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court subsequently vacated the appeals court stay and denied Zagorski's request that it review his case. The district court order will become moot if Tennessee choses to execute Zagorski with the electric chair.

NEWS (10/8): Former North Carolina death-row prisoner James Woodson, whose case resulted in a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared mandatory death sentences unconstitutional, has died. Woodson was the driver in a robbery gone bad that resulted in the murder of a store clerk. He never left the car, but received a mandatory death sentence, while the actual shooter escaped the death penalty by reaching a plea deal on lesser charges.

NEWS (10/5): The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted a stay of execution to Juan Segundo in light of Moore v. Texas to permit him to re-litigate his claim that he ineligible to be executed because he is intellectually disabled. He was scheduled to be executed on October 10. The Texas courts had previously denied his claim, applying the "Briseno factors" that were declared unconstitutional in Moore. See Executions and Stays — 2018.

NEWS (10/5): Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam denied clemency to Edmund Zagorski, scheduled to be executed on October 11.

NEWS (10/4): The Florida Supreme Court lifted the stay of execution it had issued in August for Jose Jimenez. Justices Pariente and Quince would have allowed the stay to remain in place and granted an evidentiary hearing on the constitutionality of Florida's use of the drug etomidate in its execution protocol, in light of evidence that Eric Branch may have experienced significant pain when Florida executed him using that drug on February 22, 2018.

With the Washington Supreme Court's declaration on October 11 that the state's death penalty violates its state constitution, twenty states have now abolished capital punishment.

Here is the current map of states with and without the death penalty in the United States. See States With and Without the Death Penalty.

NEW DISCUSSIONS WITH DPIC PODCAST — Professor Bharat Malkani Explores the Relationship Between Slavery, Slavery-Abolition Strategies, and the Modern U.S. Death Penalty.

Bharat Malkani, senior lecturer in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom and author of the 2018 book Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition, speaks with DPIC’s Robert Dunham and Ngozi Ndulue about the historical links between slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, and the death penalty and the lessons modern opponents of capital punishment can learn from the strategies employed by slavery abolitionists.

See Discussions With DPIC Podcasts. Listen to the podcast here.

Read summaries of the capital cases the U.S. Supreme Court is considering on our United States Supreme Court Decisions: 2018-2019 Term webpage.

Death Sentences, Executions Second Lowest in a Quarter Century

Resources

• Full text of the report.
• DPIC's Press Release.
• INFOGRAPHIC: "The Death Penalty in the U.S.".
• AUDIO: Clips.
• GRAPHICS: Individual Downloads as PNG or SVG files.
• 2017 Death Sentences by Name, Race, and County

Featured Links

"Battle Scars: Military Veterans and the Death Penalty"

Innocence
Public Opinion

DPIC Podcast Series: We have begun a new set of podcasts on the death penalty in each state, each with interesting historical facts. The following are now available: Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Vermont, Massachusetts, District of Columbia, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. Check out our podcasts now! Also listen to DPIC's podcasts on death penalty issues.