Publications & Testimony
Items: 1061 — 1070
Dec 09, 2020
New DPIC Podcast Discusses the Consequences and Cruelty of Lethal Injection
In the December 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot from Emory University Hospital speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about his discoveries from the autopsies of more than 200 executed prisoners. Those autopsies revealed the gruesome effects of execution by lethal injection and shattered the popular myth that lethal injection is a humane and painless execution process. Zivot and Dunham also…
Read MoreDec 08, 2020
Jurors and Appellate Prosecutor Say Teen Offender Brandon Bernard Should Not be Executed
As the December 10, 2020 execution date of federal death-row prisoner Brandon Bernard (pictured with his family) approached, jurors and a former prosecutor in his case came forward saying that the teen offender’s life should be spared. Bernard, who was 18 years old at the time of the offense, became the youngest offender executed by the federal government in at least 68…
Read MoreDec 07, 2020
Prosecutors Call for Ending Federal Executions
Saying “our nation’s long experiment with the death penalty has failed,” a coalition of nearly 100 criminal justice officials is calling on the federal government to halt the five executions currently scheduled for December 2020 and January 2021 and to end its use of the death…
Read MoreDec 07, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of November 30, 2020
NEWS (12/4/20) — Nevada: The Nevada Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence imposed on Mexican foreign national Carlos Gutierrez. In a 4 – 3 ruling, the court held that Nevada had violated the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations when police and prosecutors failed to notify Gutierrez of his rights to consular assistance by his government. The court further held, based upon extensive mitigating evidence presented with the assistance of the Mexican government in his…
Read MoreDec 04, 2020
DPIC Analysis — Intellectually Disabled Defendants of Color, Foreign Nationals Disproportionately Subject to the Death Penalty
Defendants of color and foreign nationals who are intellectually disabled are disproportionately likely to be sentenced to death, a Death Penalty Information Center analysis of cases involving intellectually disabled defendants…
Read MoreDec 03, 2020
COVID-19 Prison Outbreaks Kill Death-Row Prisoners in Ohio and Missouri and Infect At Least 11 on Tennessee’s Death Row
New COVID-19 outbreaks on the nation’s death rows have killed prisoners in Ohio and Missouri and sickened at least 11 men on Tennessee’s death…
Read MoreDec 02, 2020
Citing State’s Lack of Execution Drugs, South Carolina Supreme Court Stays Richard Moore’s Execution
Saying that the state lacked the ability to carry out a lethal injection, the South Carolina Supreme Court has stayed the scheduled December 4, 2020 execution of Richard Moore (pictured). With no state executions scheduled for the remainder of the year, the stay means that states will carry out fewer executions in 2020 than in any year since…
Read MoreDec 01, 2020
Florida Supreme Court Limits Retroactive Scope of Its Ruling Permitting Death Sentences After Non-Unanimous Jury Votes
In two long-awaited decisions that will alter the landscape of Florida’s death row, the Florida Supreme Court has limited the reach of a landmark ruling that overturned the state’s constitutional prohibition against death sentences imposed after a non-unanimous jury vote for death. The court’s January 2020 decision in State v. Poole had raised the specter that the court might rescind orders that had overturned the death sentences of more than 100 Florida death-row prisoners and…
Read MoreNov 30, 2020
Department of Justice Issues Lame-Duck Regulations to Broaden the Range of Available Federal Execution Methods
The range of methods available to the federal government to carry out executions could be expanded under a new Department of Justice regulation published on November 27,…
Read MoreNov 30, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of November 23, 2020
NEWS (11/26/20) — Florida: A Santa Rosa County judge has sentenced Thomas Fletcher to death for murdering his cellmate in a county prison. Fletcher’s case is emblematic of recent capital sentencing trends in which death sentences have been imposed disproportionally against defendants who waived key procedural…
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