History of the Death Penalty

In a new law review arti­cle, Professor Anna VanCleave of the University of Connecticut School of Law argues that the ​“height­ened stan­dards” of due process pro­tec­tion for cap­i­tal defen­dants, required under the Eighth Amendment, are in prac­tice no more than ​“a veneer of legit­i­ma­cy and pro­ce­dur­al cau­tion” that fail to vin­di­cate defen­dants’ rights. Professor VanCleave found that in the absence of clear guid­ance from the Supreme Court as to the actu­al mean­ing of ​“height­ened stan­dards,” lower…

On December 7, 1982, Texas strapped Charles Brooks to a gur­ney, insert­ed an intra­venous line into his arm, and inject­ed a lethal dose of sodi­um thiopen­tal into his veins, launch­ing the lethal-injec­tion era of American exe­cu­tions. In the pre­cise­ly forty years since, U.S. states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment have put 1377 pris­on­ers to death by some ver­sion of the method. Touted as swift and pain­less and a more humane way to die — just as exe­cu­tion pro­po­nents had said near­ly a cen­tu­ry before about…

Virginia made his­to­ry in 2021 when it became the first Southern state to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia tells the sto­ry of the commonwealth’s jour­ney from lead­ing exe­cu­tion­er to ground­break­ing abo­li­tion­ist state. Written by jour­nal­ist, author, and anti-death penal­ty advo­cate Dale Brumfield, the book explores Virginia’s his­to­ry sur­round­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, starting with…

As Massachusetts for­mal­ly exon­er­at­ed the last per­son con­demned for witch­craft in the colony, efforts are under way to clear the names of the 46 peo­ple wrong­ful­ly charged with witch­craft in neigh­bor­ing Connecticut dur­ing the 17^th cen­tu­ry Puritan witch…