Scientists and oth­er experts are unan­i­mous in their con­clu­sion that indef­i­nite or pro­longed soli­tary con­fine­ment caus­es seri­ous harm, and the United Nations says it amounts to tor­ture — yet most death-sen­tenced peo­ple in America are con­fined to these extreme con­di­tions of iso­la­tion and depri­va­tion for years. As of 2020, a dozen states rou­tine­ly kept death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in sin­gle cells for at least twen­ty-two hours a day with lit­tle-to-no human con­tact. Two recent devel­op­ments in capital…

The United States has reached a mile­stone in the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment this week. All four sched­uled exe­cu­tions in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Alabama took place, mark­ing the 1600^th exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty in the U.S., despite pub­lic opin­ion polls show­ing grow­ing con­cerns about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of the death penal­ty and declin­ing sup­port for its…

Executions in Oklahoma and Alabama, sched­uled just hours apart on September 26, high­light issues of pro­por­tion­al sen­tenc­ing and exper­i­men­tal meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. Emmanuel Littlejohn, who was exe­cut­ed at 10:17am CT, had received a rec­om­men­da­tion of clemen­cy from Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board because of con­flict­ing evi­dence about whether he or a co-defen­dant actu­al­ly killed the vic­tim. Alan Miller, sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in the evening of September 26, sur­vived a botched lethal…

On September 23, 2024, the Missouri Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments on the joint motion by Marcellus Williams’ legal team and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney (PA) Wesley Bell to over­turn a low­er court’s deci­sion reject­ing Mr. Williams’ appeal. Later the same day, the state supreme court unan­i­mous­ly denied the motion, stat­ing that there was ​“no cred­i­ble evi­dence of actu­al inno­cence or any show­ing of a con­sti­tu­tion­al error under­min­ing con­fi­dence in the orig­i­nal judg­ment.” Also the same…