State And Federal Info
From 1804-1940, all executions in Mississippi were carried out by hanging. The first execution by electrocution took place on October 11, 1940. From then until 1952, the electric chair was moved from county to county for 75 executions. Inmates were executed by lethal gas from 1954-1989. In 1984, the Mississippi legislature amended the state’s death penalty statute to provide for lethal injection for all individuals sentenced to death after the law went into effect. Inmates sentenced prior to the change were still executed by lethal gas. In 1998, lethal gas was removed as an option.
Sabrina Butler was 17 years old when her 9-month old son, who had a heart murmur, stopped breathing. After attempts to resuscitate her son, Butler rushed to the hospital, where the young child was pronounced dead. The following day Butler was arrested for child abuse due to the bruises left by her resuscitation attempts. She was interrogated by the police and then prosecuted. Then, in 1990, she was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.
Her conviction was overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court in 1992. (Butler v. State, 608 So.2d 314 (Miss. 1992)). The court said that the prosecution had failed to prove that the incident was anything more than an accident. At re-trial, she was acquitted on Dec. 17, 1995 after a very brief jury deliberation. It is now believed that the baby may have died either of cystic kidney disease or from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
In 2011, a bill was introduced to impose a moratorium on executions. The bill did not pass the state legislature.
Mississippi was one of two states to use a portable electric chair, and the first state to do so.
Race
Jun 21, 2019
Finding that a Mississippi prosecutor had intentionally struck black jurors in an attempt to empanel as white a jury as possible, the United States Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of death-row prisoner Curtis G…
Race
Mar 21, 2019
The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to grant a new trial to Curtis Flowers (pictured), an African-American death-row prisoner tried six times for the same murders by a white Mississippi prosecutor…
Race
Mar 15, 2019
On June 21, 2019, the United States Supreme Court vacated Curtis Flowers’ conviction in a 7 – 2 decision. For more information about the opinion, read DPIC’s summary
Innocence
Nov 06, 2018
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review whether a prosecutor with a long history of racially discriminatory jury-selection practices unconstitutionally struck black jurors in the trial of Mississippi death-row prisoner
Innocence
Sep 24, 2018
Sixteen years after a notorious and now-discredited forensic witness told a Mississippi jury that Jeffrey Havard had sexually abused and shaken his girlfriend’s six-month-old daughter to death, Havard’s death sent…
New Voices
Jul 03, 2018
Lindy Isonhood (click to enlarge picture) served on the Mississippi jury that sentenced Bobby Wilcher to death in 1994. In a commentary published on Medium, she writes that the decision t…
Arbitrariness
Jul 02, 2018
As its 2017 – 2018 term came to a close, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review two Mississippi cases that presented significant challenges to capital punishment as implemented in that state and across the country. Over the
Race
Jun 15, 2018
A new study shows that the Mississippi District Attorney’s office that has prosecuted Curtis Flowers for capital murder six times — striking almost all black jurors in each trial — has disproportionately excluded Afr…
Innocence
Oct 31, 2017
Appeals courts in Mississippi and Pennsylvania have granted new trials to two men who have long asserted their innocence of charges that had sent them to their states’ death rows. On October 26, the Mississippi Su…
Mental Illness
Jul 28, 2017
A Jackson County, Mississippi judge has sentenced Scotty Lakeith Street (pictured), a capital defendant suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, to life without possibility of parole after his capital sentencing jury did not…
