On July 18, 2024, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the state Supreme Court to block a sched­uled evi­den­tiary hear­ing for Marcellus Williams and deny him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish his inno­cence before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on September 24, 2024. The Circuit Court of St. Louis County sched­uled the August 21^st hear­ing to assess the ​“clear and con­vinc­ing” evi­dence of Mr. Williams’ actu­al inno­cence that prompt­ed St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to file a motion to vacate…

Attorneys for Warren King (pic­tured), who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Georgia in 1998 for the mur­der of a con­ve­nience store clerk, have uncov­ered evi­dence that shows the pros­e­cu­tor, John B. Johnson, with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence from Mr. King’s defense team at the time of tri­al. A new court fil­ing indi­cates that ADA Johnson failed to dis­close a plea deal reached with Mr. King’s co-defen­dant, Walter Smith, the only eye­wit­ness to the crime. Both Mr. King and Mr. Smith were charged with…

Biography: Unwritten by Toby Lee Greenberg high­lights the ruined lives of those exon­er­at­ed from U.S. death rows through an art instal­la­tion of books. According to a press release from the artist, the instal­la­tion of emp­ty books at The Gallery at Penn College reflects the ​“frag­ile lives wast­ed and lost with­in a sys­tem” and prompts view­ers to ​“con­sid­er the sim­ple moments so often tak­en for…

The state of Texas was sched­uled to exe­cute Ruben Gutierrez (pic­tured) on July 16, 2024; how­ev­er, the United States Supreme Court issued a rare, last-minute stay of exe­cu­tion just 20 min­utes before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion. This is the first stay of exe­cu­tion grant­ed by the Supreme Court since it issued a stay for Richard Glossip in 2023. In a peti­tion filed with the Supreme Court, attor­neys for Mr. Gutierrez asked the Court to inter­vene because Texas has denied…

On Thursday, July 18, 2024, the state of Alabama is sched­uled to exe­cute Keith Gavin (pic­tured left) by lethal injec­tion, despite court find­ings that his tri­al coun­sel was inef­fec­tive. Mr. Gavin was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1999 for the shoot­ing death of a deliv­ery dri­ver. A non-unan­i­mous jury vot­ed 10 – 2 in favor of the death penal­ty for Mr. Gavin, and the tri­al court accept­ed the jury’s sen­tenc­ing out­come. During the penal­ty phase of tri­al, Mr. Gavin’s defense team did not present…