Publications & Testimony

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 executions…

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 new…

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 Rabbani. Tony Tyrone Dixon, a prisoner with intellectual disabilities, was convicted of capital murder he committed at the age of 17 and sentenced to death in 1995. In August 1998, Mr. Dixon’s appellate attorney…

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 pool. Mr. Flowers’ final conviction and death sentence was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Flowers v. Mississippi. The Court found that Evans had unconstitutionally struck Black jurors from the venire because of their…

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 cases. DPIC’s redesigned outcomes of…

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 opposition. “The [Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals] OCCA’s decision cannot be reconciled with this Court’s…

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 clemency. On August 22, 2017, former…

A bill that Idaho Governor Brad Little signed into law in March 2023, authorizing the use of the firing squad as a method of execution, went into effect on July 1, 2023. This law grants the director of Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) the authority to determine if lethal injection is available and, if deemed unavailable, to carry out the execution by firing squad. Included in the new law is an estimated cost of $750,000 to renovate a cell block at Idaho Maximum Security Institution…

A total of 68 executions have occurred in Saudi Arabia this year, with more than 20 executions relating to terrorism charges occurring since early May, according to Agence France-Presse. On July 3, five men, including one Egyptian national, were executed for a deadly attack on a house of worship in the Al-Ahsa governorate, resulting in five dead and several injured. On June 25, two Yemeni nationals were executed on terrorism charges, and on June 12, three Saudi men were executed for the killing…