Dec 23, 2020

Fueled by at least 16 COVID-19 deaths and a record-low num­ber of new death sen­tences caused by the can­ce­la­tion or post­pone­ment of cap­i­tal tri­als, the pop­u­la­tion of U.S. death row dipped 3.4% in the year span­ning October 2019 through September 2020…

Innocence

Dec 22, 2020

The Texas Supreme Court has unan­i­mous­ly ruled that the state’s comp­trol­ler had no author­i­ty to deny death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown’s appli­ca­tion for com­pen­sa­tion after a tri­al court had declared him ​“actu…

Clemency

Dec 21, 2020

Two men sched­uled for exe­cu­tion by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in January 2021 are among the fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers who have test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Lawyers for Corey Johnso…

International

Dec 18, 2020

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the human rights body charged with over­see­ing Western Hemisphere nations’ com­pli­ance with human rights oblig­a­tions, has called on the United States to halt the sched­uled Janua…

Innocence

Dec 17, 2020

A for­mer Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er has been freed, one month after the tri­al court barred his retri­al because of ​“egre­gious” pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct by the coun­ty dis­trict attor­ney. On December 1, 2020, Berks County…

Dec 16, 2020

Death sen­tences reached their low­est lev­el in the mod­ern era and exe­cu­tions hit a gen­er­a­tional low despite an his­tor­i­cal­ly anom­alous fed­er­al exe­cu­tion spree, accord­ing to the 

Upcoming Executions

Dec 15, 2020

Saying that “[l]ethal injec­tion appears to us to be impos­si­ble from a prac­ti­cal point of view today,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) told reporters it is ​“pret­ty clear” that the state will not exe­cute anyone…

Public Opinion

Dec 14, 2020

Just hours after tak­ing office, new­ly elect­ed Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón issued a series of sweep­ing changes that end­ed new death-penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions and moved towards recon­sid­er­ing exist­ing deat…