Publications & Testimony

On July 17, 2023, a Shelby County Criminal Court judge struck down a new statute, passed by the Tennessee Legislature in April 2023, to expand author­i­ty of the appoint­ed state attor­ney gen­er­al in death penal­ty cas­es. Judge Paula Skahan ruled that the law uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly removes the pow­er of the local­ly elect­ed dis­trict attor­ney. Some attor­neys and law­mak­ers who dis­agreed with the new statute ear­li­er expressed con­cerns that the new law tar­get­ed pro­gres­sive dis­trict attor­neys who were…

Two of the nation’s high­est-use death penal­ty states have sched­uled exe­cu­tions for July 20, 2023. Alabama is set to exe­cute James Barber (pic­tured, left), resum­ing exe­cu­tions after Governor Kay Ivey halt­ed them in November 2022 in response to three con­sec­u­tive botched exe­cu­tions. Oklahoma plans to exe­cute Jemaine Cannon (pic­tured, right), one of the 25 peo­ple includ­ed in the two-year exe­cu­tion spree announced in…

Today marks the five-year anniver­sary of Ohio’s last exe­cu­tion, which took place on July 18, 2018. Ohio now joins 15 oth­er states with­out an exe­cu­tion in the past five years. Although there is no for­mal mora­to­ri­um, Governor Mike DeWine has issued sev­er­al reprieves due to con­cerns about the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and the dif­fi­cul­ty the state has had obtain­ing lethal injec­tion drugs. Ohio has exe­cut­ed 56 peo­ple in the mod­ern death penal­ty era, plac­ing it 8^th over­all in the num­ber of…

Florida’s new death sen­tenc­ing law can­not apply to defen­dants who com­mit­ted their crimes before the law was passed ear­li­er this year, Florida Circuit Judge Kevin Abdoney rules. Florida law pre­vi­ous­ly required that a sen­tenc­ing jury must unan­i­mous­ly vote for death before the court could impose a death sen­tence, but in April of 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that allows a jury to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence with as few as 8 votes. The rul­ing in Bryan Riley’s case means that the…

The Harris County District Clerk’s Office is attempt­ing to resolve near­ly one-hun­dred crim­i­nal appeals, includ­ing two death penal­ty cas­es, that were over­looked by the court sys­tem for decades. Among them are the appeals of the two death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, Tony Tyrone Dixon and Syed…

The jury that found Richard Bowers guilty of all 63 fed­er­al charges he faces in con­nec­tion with the 2018 Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue shoot­ing found him eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty on July 13, 2023. Jurors delib­er­at­ed for about two hours before find­ing that the pros­e­cu­tion had met its bur­den by prov­ing that Mr. Bowers had the nec­es­sary intent to com­mit the crime and that the crime had spe­cif­ic aggra­vat­ing fac­tors for eli­gi­bil­i­ty. These fac­tors includ­ed the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of sev­er­al of the victims.

Doug Evans, the District Attorney who tried death row exoneree Curtis Flowers for mur­der six times, is retir­ing. Mr. Flowers received four death sen­tences, but each con­vic­tion was over­turned when courts found that Evans had ille­gal­ly exclud­ed Black jurors from the jury…

The Death Penalty Information Center main­tains an up-to-date list of sched­uled exe­cu­tions and out­comes of death war­rants issued by the states and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Updated each busi­ness day, the Upcoming Executions page con­tains inter­ac­tive maps dis­play­ing the cur­rent num­ber of active death war­rants, as well as the total num­ber of exe­cu­tions sched­uled for each year, through 2026. There are also tables list­ing addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about each of these…

On July 5, 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (pic­tured) filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in sup­port of death row pris­on­er Richard Glossip’s peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari. The Innocence Project and six legal schol­ars have also filed briefs in sup­port of Mr. Glossip, while the victim’s fam­i­ly and the Oklahoma District Attorneys Association have filed a brief in…

On June 29, 2023, Missouri Governor Mike Parson (pic­tured) lift­ed the stay of exe­cu­tion for Marcellus Williams, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Felisha Gayle, a for­mer St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter in 1998. Governor Parson also dis­solved the Board of Inquiry, a judi­cial pan­el appoint­ed by for­mer Missouri Governor Eric Greitens to review evi­dence of inno­cence and pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions on Mr. Williams’s appli­ca­tion for executive…