NEW FROM DPIC: The Death Penalty Information Center has released our annual analysis of developments in the U.S. death penalty,The Death Penalty in 2018: Year End Report. Highlights include that death-penalty usage remained near generational lows, with executions below 30 and new death sentences below 50 for the fourth straight year. The size of death row dropped nationwide for the 18th year in a row. Read the report here.

NEWS (1/14): The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted a stay of execution to Blaine Milam to permit him to litigate challenges to the constitutionality of the prosecution's use of bite-mark evidence to obtain his conviction and death sentence and to reconsider his claim of intellectual disability based upon current clinical diagnostic criteria. See Outcomes of 2019 Death Warrants.

NEWS (1/11): By a unanimous vote, the Florida Clemency Board posthumously pardoned the "Groveland Four," four young African-American men falsely accused of raping a 17-year-old white woman in Lake County in 1949. The vote took place in the first meeting of the board convened by newly inaugurated Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Tried before an all-white jury, World War II veterans Samuel Shepherd and Walter Irvin were sentenced to death and 17-year-old Charles Greenlee was sentenced to life. Ernest Thomas—who escaped from the county jail after being charged—was hunted down and murdered by a posse of 1,000 white men. While transporting Shepherd and Irvin to the courthouse after their convictions were overturned, Sheriff Willis McCall shot the two handcuffed prisoners, murdering Shepherd. Irvin was again sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life. See Innocence.

NEWS (1/7): The U.S. Supreme Court has granted the state of Ohio's petition for writ of certiorari, overturned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit's decision finding Danny Hill ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability, and remanded the case to the circuit to reconsider the issue under Supreme Court caselaw in effect at the time the Ohio state courts ruled on the issue in 2008. The justices held that the federal habeas corpus statute limits the circuit court to considering case law that was "clearly established" at the time of the state court decision and that the circuit court had improperly relied upon U.S. Supreme Court intellectual disability cases decided in 2014 and 2016. See Intellectual Disability.

NEWS (12/31): In the last capital habeas decision of 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld a district court order granting of a new trial to California death-row prisoner Freddie Lee Taylor, 30 years after he was convicted and sentenced to death. The grant of relief was based upon the state court's failure to conduct a competency hearing at the time of trial and the impossibility of conducting a retroactive competency hearing today.

NEWS (12/20 & 12/28): The Florida Supreme Court issued rulings in thirteen death penalty cases, upholding convictions and death sentences in ten, overturning one death sentence, remanding for a hearing on intellectual disability in one case, and allowing limited DNA testing in another case.

The most notable of the decisions came on December 20 in the cases of Gerald Murray and Steven Taylor, who had been tried separately for the same murder. Both were unconstitutionally sentenced to death after non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendations. Murray's death sentence—imposed after an 11-1 jury recommendation for death—was overturned because, following three sentencing hearings in his case, his appeal became final after the June 2002 date the Florida court chose as its cutoff for enforcing the constitutional prohibition against non-unanimous sentences. Taylor's death sentence—imposed after an 11-1 jury recommendation for death—was upheld because, following a single penalty-phase proceeding, his appeal became final before the cutoff date.

On December 28, the court reversed a trial court decision that had rejected Jermaine Foster's claim that he was ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. The appeals court ruled that the trial court had applied an unconstitutional standard for evaluating whether Foster was intellectually disabled and directed the court to reconsider Foster's claim using contemporary clinical diagnostic standards. 

NEWS (12/28): The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence imposed on William Rivera in Philadelphia, holding that Rivera was not provided ineffective penalty-phase representation.

NEWS (12/26): The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence imposed on James Tench, convicted of killing his mother in 2013, allegedly to cover up a theft.

NEWS (12/24): California Governor Jerry Brown has issued an executive order granting limited DNA testing to death-row prisoner Kevin Cooper. Cooper has long maintained his innocence of a 1985 murder of four, and substantial evidence points to other individuals as the killers.

NEWS (12/20): The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has overturned the federal death sentence imposed on Azibo Aquart in Connecticut, ruling that the prosecution improperly vouched for the testimony of one of its witnesses in the penalty-phase of Aquart's trial.

NEWS (12/20): The U.S Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has denied habeas corpus relief to Oklahoma death-row prisoner Ricky Ray Malone, ruling that the cumulative constitutional violations in his case constituted harmless error.

NEWS (12/14): An intermediate appeals court in California has upheld a state statute that grants the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation broad discretion in selecting a method of execution. The California Court of Appeal for the First District ruled that the law, which provides that "[t]he punishment of death shall be inflicted by the administration of a lethal gas or by an intravenous injection of a substance or substances in a lethal quantity sufficient to cause death, by standards established under the direction of the [DoC]," does not delegate fundamental legislative decisions to an administrative agency or otherwise violate the state constitution's separation of powers doctrine.

NEWS (12/13): Florida's execution of Jose Jimenez was the last execution scheduled in the United States in 2018. Here is a map of where the 25 U.S. executions took place this year. 

NEWS (12/13): The Mississippi Supreme Court has remanded David Cox's case to trial court for a determination of whether he is mentally competent to waive his appeals and be executed and whether he still wants to waive his appeals. Cox had written to the court seeking to fire his lawyers and waive his appeals and subsequently authorized his lawyers to file a motion withdrawing his attempted waiver. 

NEW DISCUSSIONS WITH DPIC PODCAST — 2018 Year End Report

The DPIC staff discusses key themes from the 2018 Year End Report,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 who were exonerated in 2018, the theme of executing people with characteristics that make them vulnerable to unfair legal proceedings, and the ongoing controversy surrounding execution methods.

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

DPIC has released a new report, Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States. The comprehensive study documents the laws and policies that states have adopted to keep information about executions inaccessible to the public, to pharmaceutical companies, and to prisoners facing execution. Read the executive summary here and download the full report 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.

LATEST EXONERATION: Former death-row prisoner Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin was exonerated in Florida on November 5, 2018, 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. 

Death Penalty Usage Stays Near Generational Lows

Resources

• Full text of the report.
• DPIC's Press Release.
• INFOGRAPHIC: "The Death Penalty in the U.S.".
• GRAPHICS: Individual Downloads as PNG or SVG files.
• 2018 Death Sentences by Name, Race, and County

Featured Links

"Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States"

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.