Sentencing Alternatives

On August 16, 2023, Michael Cummins, who was fac­ing the death penal­ty for the 2019 killings of eight indi­vid­u­als in rur­al Tennessee, pled guilty to all eight counts of first-degree mur­der in exchange for life in prison with­out parole. Sumner County District Attorney Ray Whitley told the press that he had reversed his deci­sion to seek a death sen­tence and agreed to the plea based on new evi­dence regard­ing Mr. Cummins’ men­tal health. That evi­dence includ­ed Mr. Cummins’ brain scans, which showed ​“sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems” and impair­ment of brain activ­i­ty. DA…

The Death Penalty Information Center has cre­at­ed a web­page ded­i­cat­ed to restora­tive jus­tice, a sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tive in crim­i­nal cas­es, includ­ing lim­it­ed use in death penal­ty cas­es. This resource high­lights the foun­da­tions of restora­tive jus­tice, com­mon approach­es, recent stud­ies relat­ed to the prac­tice, and exam­ples of its use. 

A non-unan­i­mous Florida jury has returned a ver­dict of life with­out parole for Nikolas Cruz, the teen offend­er con­vict­ed of killing 17 peo­ple in the February 14, 2018 shoot­ing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (pic­tured) in Parkland, Florida. The October 13, 2022 ver­dict, in which three jurors vot­ed to spare Cruz’s life, con­clud­ed a six-month sen­tenc­ing tri­al. Florida law, like that of near­ly every death-penal­ty state, requires a unan­i­mous jury ver­dict before a death sen­tence may be imposed.

Bell County pros­e­cu­tors have dropped their efforts to impose the death penal­ty on Marvin Guy (pic­tured), an African American man who has been held eight years with­out tri­al in con­nec­tion with the death of a white police offi­cer dur­ing a botched no-knock raid in Killeen, Texas in May 2014.

On the eighth anniver­sary of the August 19, 2014 mur­der of kid­napped jour­nal­ist James Foley, a U.S. fed­er­al dis­trict court in Virginia sen­tenced his killer, Islamic State mil­i­tant El Shafee Elsheikh, to eight life sen­tences in prison. His moth­er, Diane Foley (pic­tured), a lead­ing advo­cate for Americans held hostage abroad, hailed the life sen­tence as ​“a huge vic­to­ry” and ​“a very impor­tant deterrent.”

A Missouri judge has reject­ed the state’s first jury rec­om­men­da­tion for a death sen­tence in nine years, and has instead re-sen­tenced for­mer death-row pris­on­er Marvin D. Rice (pic­tured) to life with­out parole.

Timothy Foster, whose con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 because Georgia pros­e­cu­tors dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly struck Black jurors from serv­ing in his case, has been resen­tenced to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

Florida death-row pris­on­er Paul Durousseau was re-sen­tenced to life in prison with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole December 10, 2021, when a sec­ond cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing jury reached a non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing verdict.

The Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, cre­at­ed by the California state leg­is­la­ture to review the state’s crim­i­nal laws, has issued a report unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ing that the state repeal its death penal­ty. The six-mem­ber committee’s 39-page Death Penalty Report, released November 17, 2021, also offers inter­me­di­ate rec­om­men­da­tions for reduc­ing the size of California’s near­ly 700-per­son death row — the largest of any state in the country.

The num­ber of women serv­ing extreme sen­tences in the United States has increased sharply in the last decade, a September 2021 report by a col­lab­o­ra­tive of crim­i­nal law reform orga­ni­za­tions has found.