NEWS (4/19): Alabama executed Walter Moody, who at age 83 was the oldest person executed in the modern era. It was the 8th execution in the U.S. in 2018 and the second in Alabama.

NEWS (4/19): A Florida jury has voted unanimously to sentence Haitian national Sanel Saint-Simon to life without possibility of parole in the murder and suspected sexual assault of his long-time girlfriend's sixteen-year-old daughter. The case is notable because it was one of 29 cases Governor Rick Scott had removed from State Attorney Aramis Ayala and transferred to a special prosecutor after Ayala had announced that that her office would not pursue the death penalty in any case.

NEWS (4/18): In Ohio v. Mason, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that its capital sentencing statute does not violate a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury and the U.S. Supreme Court's 2016 decision Hurst v. Florida, which reiterated that a defendant is entitled to a jury finding of all facts necessary to impose a death sentence; "[a] jury's mere recommendation is not enough." Despite recognizing that some other courts have reached a different conclusion, the Ohio Supreme Court held that jury's weighing of aggravating circumstances against mitigating factors is not a fact-finding process, so it is not governed by Hurst, but even if it were, there was no violation because Ohio law requires the jury to unanimously agree that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt before the trial judge can consider imposing a death sentence.

NEWS (4/18): A Connecticut trial court has resentenced former death-row prisoner Jessie Campbell III to life in prison without the possibility of release. Campbell is the sixth death-row prisoner to be resentenced following the Connecticut Supreme Court's 2016 ruling declaring the state's death penalty unconstitutional. Five other prisoners who were on death row at the time of that decision have yet to be formally resentenced.

NEWS (4/17): The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Georgia death-row prisoner Marion Wilson, rebuffing state prosecutors' efforts to further limit federal court authority to enforce the constitution in habeas corpus cases. In a 6-3 vote with Justice Breyer writing for the majority, the Court reversed a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that had denied Wilson relief on his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. The Court said that the appeals court had improperly speculated as to possible reasons a state court could have denied Wilson's claim instead of reviewing the actual reasons the state post-conviction court had offered for its decision. The Court returned the case to the Eleventh Circuit for further review of Wilson's ineffectiveness claim under the appropriate standard.

NEWS (4/17): The New Hamphire legislature's House Criminal Justice Committee voted 12-6 to recommend that the full House repeal the state's death penalty. Previously, the state senate voted 14-10 to approve SB 593, which would replace the state's death penalty with a sentence of life without parole. Governor Chris Sununu has said he will veto the bill.

NEWS (4/13): An Oklahoma County trial court has ruled that Gov. Mary Fallin and the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety violated the state’s open records law by delaying more than 17 months before releasing records related to the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014. The court ruled that the state's recent production of documents concerning the execution constituted an adequate substantive response to those records requests. 

NEWS (4/12): Though unanimously finding error that had previously required granting a new trial, the Washington Supreme Court voted 5-4 to change its law and uphold the conviction of death-row prisoner Conner Schierman and 6-3 to uphold his death sentence. In addition to the two guilt-stage dissenters, two other justices found that Schierman had been unconstitutionally sentenced to death, bringing to six the number of justices who believed he was entitled to relief. But three of the justices who had voted to grant him a new trial voted to permit his execution to go forward.

NEWS (4/12): By a vote of 5-4, the Mississippi Supreme Court has reversed a trial court decision that had found Willie Russell ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. The court returned Russell's case to the trial court with directions to permit prosecutors to conduct additional testing with which they could attempt to challenge existing diagnoses that Russell is intellectually disabled. See Intellectual Disability.

NEWS (4/12): The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence imposed on Enoch Hall. The court ruled that the jury's consideration of an invalid aggravating circumstance and a separate violation of Hall's right to a jury finding of all facts necessary to impose the death penalty was harmless because the jury had unanimously recommended the death penalty in his case. Two justices dissented, arguing that the jury's weighing of aggravating and mitigating circumstances was affected by its consideration of the invalid aggravating circumstance and that, but for that constitutional violation, the jury's sentencing recommendation might not have been unanimous.

NEWS (4/11): By a 3-2 vote, the Idaho Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence imposed upon Erick Hall. One justice dissented on the grounds that the trial judge had provided an instruction that misled the jury about the likelihood that Hall's sentence could be commuted and because the jury was exposed to aggravating evidence beyond what Idaho law permitted it to consider. A second justice dissented because the aggravating circumstance that the murder was committed in a manner that was "especially heinous, atrocious, and cruel" was unconstitutionally vague and that this error was not cured by the equally vague requirement that the murder "manifest[ed] exceptional depravity.

NEWS (4/10-11): For the second consecutive year, a bill to prospectively abolish Louisiana's death penalty passed the state Senate Judiciary Committee but failed in the House Committee on the Administation of Criminal Justice. The senate committee voted 4-1 to approve the measure on April 10, but the house committee voted 10-8 on April 11 to defeat the proposal. In 2017, the bill passed the senate committee 6-1 and was defeated in the house committee 9-8. See Recent Legislative Activity.

NEWS (4/10): The Arizona Supreme Court has upheld a trial court ruling that, because of his neurocognitive impairments and intoxication, Kevin Artice Miles’s reduced culpability for his participation in the crime made him ineligible for the death penalty. The court vacated his death sentence and directed that he be resentenced to life imprisonment with eligibility for parole consideration after 25 years.

NEWS (4/5): The Florida Supreme Court has decided six more death penalty cases in which prisoners challenged their death sentences as violating the U.S. and Florida Supreme Court decisions in Hurst v. Florida and Hurst v. State.

The court overturned the death sentence imposed on Joseph Smith following a non-unanimous (10-2) jury recommendation for death. The court denied relief in five cases—Michael Reynolds, William Taylor, Willie Seth Crain, Jr., Michael Tanzi, and Ray Johnston—excusing the constitutional violations as “harmless” because the juries had unanimously recommended the death penalty. In Reynolds’ case, it said the error was harmless even though he waived presenting mitigating evidence to the jury and later presented it to the judge specifically because he knew the judge would make the ultimate decision whether or not to impose the death penalty.

NEWS (4/3): After the U.S. Supreme Court had remanded his case for reconsideration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has denied appellate review to Georgia death-row prisoner Keith Tharpe, who had been sentenced to death by a racist White juror who used a used a racial epithet to describe Tharpe and said he "wondered if Black people even have souls." The appeals court decision denied Tharpe a "certificate of appealability"—a prerequisite for obtaining federal appellate review—saying he was required first to present the issue to Georgia's state courts.

NEWS (3/30): The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has denied habeas corpus relief to Oklahoma death-row prisoner Donald Grant, upholding the conviction and death sentence imposed in his case. 

NEWS (3/29): The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in Arkansas Department of Corrections v. Shults that the state department of corrections must disclose pharmaceutical package inserts and labels that could identify the manufacturer of the potassium chloride it intends to use in executions, but that it must redact lot and batch numbers and other information that could lead to the disclosure of the distributor who supplied the drugs to the department.

NEWS (3/29): The Florida Supreme Court has denied relief to four more prisoners who have challenged their death sentences as violating the U.S. and Florida Supreme Court decisions in Hurst v. Florida and Hurst v. State.

In the cases of defendants Norman Grim and Samuel Smithers, the court ruled that the denial of the defendants' Sixth Amendment right to a jury determination of facts necessary to impose a death penalty was harmless because their sentencing juries had unanimously recommended death sentences. 

On March 27, the court upheld the death sentences unconstitutionally imposed upon Ronnie Johnson following 7-5 and 9-3 jury recommendations for death in two different cases. The court ruled it would not apply its proscription against non-unanimous death verdicts in Johnson's cases because the direct appeals that affirmed his death sentences were decided in 1998. The Florida court has adopted June 2002, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ring v. Arizona, as the triggering date for enforcing the constitutional protections set forth in the Hurst decisions.

On March 23, the court upheld the death sentence unconstitutionally imposed upon Ricardo Gonzalez following an 8-4 jury recommendation for death because his death sentence became final in 2001.  See Florida Death-Penalty Appeals Decided in Light of Hurst.

NEWS (3/27): Texas executed Rosendo Rodriguez. He was pronounced dead on March 27 at 6:46 pm CST, twenty-two minutes after the lethal drug was administered. It was the 7th execution in the United States in 2018 and the fourth carried out by Texas. All of the executions have involved female victims; five have involved white victims and one each has involved a black victim and a Latina victim. See Execution List 2018.

NEWS (3/27): A California state-court judge lifted a 2012 injunction prohibiting executions because the then-existing statute required the state to comply with administrative procedures, which the court found it failed to do. California changed its statute after a November 2016 referendum, and the state is no longer required to comply with such procedures.

NEWS (3/26): Ohio Governor John Kasich has commuted the death sentence of prisoner William Montgomery to life without the possibility of parole. Montgomery was scheduled to be executed on April 11, and on March 16, the Ohio Parole Board voted 6-4 in favor of commutation. See Clemency.

NEW DISCUSSIONS WITH DPIC PODCAST: Racial Discrimination in Death-Penalty Jury Selection: A Conversation with Steve Bright

Stephen B. Bright, the former President of the Southern Center for Human Rights, speaks with DPIC’s Anne Holsinger about the ongoing problem of racial discrimination in jury selection in death-penalty cases. Mr. Bright, who has argued the issue three times in the U.S. Supreme Court, discusses Foster v. Chatman—the most recent of those cases—and new evidence of intentional race discrimination in seven capital cases by the Columbus, Georgia prosecutors, including the prosecutor who discriminatorily excluded African-American jurors in Mr. Foster's case. Mr. Bright explains why current law provides an insufficient remedy for this problem and offers suggestions to prevent the pervasive exclusion of people of color from death-penalty juries.

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.