Publications & Testimony

Amidst a continued post-election execution surge and increased suppression of peaceful prison protests, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) and 67 human rights organizations across four continents expressed their support for the ongoing “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” weekly hunger strike movement currently spanning 17 Iranian prisons across the country. The August 27, 2024 statement, published a day after the first public hanging of the year, “call[ed] for an immediate halt on all executions…

On August 23, 2024, the South Carolina Department of Corrections announced that the state supreme court has set a September 20, 2024, execution date for Freddie Owens, which would be the first execution in South Carolina since 2011. Mr. Owens was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999 for the killing of a convenience store clerk in Greenville, South Carolina and he was later convicted in the murder of a cellmate. In a July 31^st ruling, the South Carolina Supreme Court decided that the state’s…

In this new series, the Death Penalty Information Center will occasionally highlight student works on capital punishment, including master’s and PhD theses, and law review articles. University of Alabama master’s degree candidate Christine Poole’s 2024 thesis explores the use of moral disengagement theory in justifying support for capital punishment. Using online surveys, she evaluated participants’ knowledge of the death penalty, support for the death penalty, and their use of moral…

On August 21, 2024, Marcellus Williams (pictured), who is scheduled to be executed on September 24, 2024, agreed to enter an Alford plea in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. This agreement would have ensured that Mr. Williams, who has always maintained his innocence in the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, would not be executed. But hours after Judge Bruce F. Hilton accepted the plea agreement, Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the Missouri Supreme Court to block the deal, claiming…

On August 14, the Associated Press reported that the city of Edmond, Oklahoma agreed to pay $7.15 million to Glynn Simmons, the longest-incarcerated innocent person in the United States. Mr. Simmons spent 48 years in prison, including two years on death row, before he was released last July. Mr. Simmons was officially exonerated by a judge in December 2023 and received $175,000 from the state of Oklahoma, the maximum amount allowed for wrongful convictions under state law. Officials have known…

An analysis from The Appeal of more than two dozen cases in which LGBTQ+ defendants faced the death penalty found evidence that anti-LGBTQ+ bias affected case outcomes. After an examination of media reports, academic journals, and legal documents, The Appeal determined that these cases are likely a significant undercount of the number of LGBTQ+ people sentenced to death. “These capital cases illustrate the ingrained anti-LGBTQ+ bias endemic to the U.S. legal system — from sodomy laws that…

In an August 14, 2024 op-ed in The Kansas City Star, Carolyn McGinn, a Kansas State Senate Republican representing District 31, and Kelson Bohnet, a capital public defender and board member for the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, argue that the state’s capital punishment system has failed, emphasizing its costliness, lack of deterrent effect, and inherent risk of “irreparable harm,” and call for abolition during the next legislative session. “July 1 marked 30 years of failure,”…

Theodore B. Olson, former U.S. Solicitor General from 2001 to 2004, who lost his wife in the September 11^th terror attacks, says he felt relief upon hearing the announcement that three of the defendants entered into an agreement to plead guilty in exchange for removal of the death penalty as a sentencing option. However, Mr. Olson writes that his relief was short-lived when within 48 hours of the announcement Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin revoked the plea agreement. Mr. Olson believes this…

On August 7, 2024, Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board voted 3 – 2 to recommend clemency for 52-year-old Emmanuel Littlejohn, who is currently scheduled to be executed on September 26. The final decision to grant clemency, reducing Mr. Littlejohn’s death sentence to life without parole, rests with Governor Kevin Stitt, who has only granted clemency once during his tenure. “I’ve admitted to my part,” said Mr. Littlejohn during his clemency hearing. “I committed a robbery that had devastating…

On July 29, 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the state’s first execution warrant of 2024, scheduling an execution date for Loran Cole (pictured) in just thirty days, on August 29, 2024. Mr. Cole’s execution warrant comes nearly ten months after Florida’s last execution, which was the last of the state’s six executions carried out in 2023. Mr. Cole was sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder of a Florida State University student in Marion County, Florida. Following the issuance of…