
State & Federal
Wyoming
News & Developments
News
Mar 22, 2022
Bungled Resentencing of Wyoming’s Only Active Death Penalty Case Revictimizes Victim’s Family

March 25, 2022 will mark the end of the only death penalty case in Wyoming — or at least the family of Lisa Marie Kimmell hopes it will.
Read MoreMar 19, 2021
NEWS BRIEF — Wyoming State Senate Defeats Bill to Repeal the Death Penalty
The Wyoming state senate has defeated a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty. Senate File 150, sponsored by Senator Brian Boner (R – Douglas, pictured during the floor debate), was reported out of the Senate Revenue Committee by a 4 – 1 vote on March 4, the second time a bill to end Wyoming’s death penalty had passed a state senate committee. However, the bill failed in the state senate by a vote of 19 – 11. Nine Republicans and the chamber’s two Democrats supported the measure.
Read MoreMar 05, 2021
Wyoming Senate Committee Passes Bill to Repeal State’s Death Penalty
A Wyoming state senate committee has advanced to the full Senate a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty.
Read MoreOct 21, 2020
New Voices: Woman Who Lost Mother and Husband in Separate Murders Calls on Wyoming to Repeal Death Penalty
A Wyoming woman whose mother and husband were murdered in separate incidents is calling on the state to repeal its death penalty for the benefit of victims’ family members.
Read MoreAug 14, 2020
Legislators in Virtual Forum Say Economic Impact of Coronavirus Adds to Conservatives’ Concerns About the Death Penalty
Legislators in an August 13, 2020 virtual forum on capital punishment say that the economic impact of the coronavirus on state budgets adds to their concerns about the viability and desirability of the death penalty as a social policy.
Read MoreJul 21, 2020
Wyoming Governor “Very Seriously” Considering Death Penalty Moratorium
Calling capital punishment a “luxury” that the state can no longer afford, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon (pictured) told legislators that he is “very seriously” considering imposing a moratorium on the state’s rarely-used death penalty.
Read MoreDec 23, 2019
DPIC Analysis: Death Penalty Erosion Spreads Across the Western United States in 2019
In a year of declining death-penalty usage across the United States, nowhere was the erosion of capital punishment as sustained and pronounced in 2019 as it was in the western United States. Continuing a wave of momentum from Washington’s judicial abolition of capital punishment in October 2018, one state halted executions and dismantled its death chamber, another cleared its death row, two cut back on the circumstances in which the death penalty could be sought and imposed, and the entire region set record lows for new death sentences and executions.
Read MoreOct 29, 2019
More Than 250 Conservative Leaders Join Call to End Death Penalty
More than 250 conservative leaders from across the country have signed on to a statement expressing their opposition to capital punishment as administered across the United States and issued a “call [to] our fellow conservatives to reexamine the death penalty and demonstrate the leadership needed to end this failed policy.” Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP) released the statement in conjunction with an October 28, 2019 nationally webcast press conference that highlighted on-going efforts by conservative advocates in Ohio, Utah, and Wyoming to abolish the death penalty in those…
Read MoreJul 22, 2019
Death-Penalty News and Developments for the Week of July 22 – 28, 2019: Appeals Court Permits New Capital Prosecution in Only Wyoming Death-Penalty Case
NEWS: July 23—The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that Wyoming prosecutors may seek the death penalty in resentencing proceedings against 74-year-old Dale Wayne Eaton. Eaton had been the only person on Wyoming’s death row between 2004, when he was sentenced to death for a 1988 killing, and 2014, when a federal district court reversed his death sentence for ineffective penalty-phase representation. At that time, Eaton sought to bar a capital resentencing trial, arguing that the death of potential mitigation witnesses and the loss of mitigating evidence caused by the…
Read MoreFeb 19, 2019
Death-Penalty Repeal Efforts Across U.S. Spurred by Growing Conservative Support
Bills to repeal and replace the death penalty with non-capital punishments have gained new traction across the United States in 2019 as a result of opposition to the death penalty among ideologically conservative legislators. That movement – buoyed by fiscal and pro-life conservatives, conservative law-reform advocates, and the deepening involvement of the Catholic Church in death-penalty abolition – has led to unprecedented successes in numerous houses of state legislatures and moved repeal efforts closer to fruition in a number of deeply Republican states. In 2019, conservative legislators are leading the…
Read MoreJan 23, 2019
Bill to Abolish Wyoming’s Death Penalty Introduced with Bipartisan Support
A bipartisan coalition of Wyoming legislators has introduced a bill to abolish the state’s death penalty. On January 15, 2019, Cheyenne Republican State Representative Jared Olsen (pictured, left) and Republican State Senator Brian Boner (pictured, right), introduced HB145, which would repeal the death penalty and replace it with a judicially imposed sentence of life without parole or life imprisonment. The bill, co-sponsored by sixteen other representatives and senators, has the backing of several legislative leaders, including Speaker of the House Steve Harshman, R‑Casper, and Senate Minority Leader Chris Rothfuss, D‑Laramie.…
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Timeline
1871 - John Boyer becomes the first man to be legally executed in Wyoming and is publicly hanged in front of a Wyoming jail.
1977 - Wyoming reinstates the death penalty following Furman v. Georgia.
1992 - Wyoming carries out most recent execution, executing Mark Hopkinson by lethal injection.
2001 - Governor Jim Geringer signs a law to add the sentencing option of life without parole as an alternative penalty for defendants convicted of first-degree murder.
2004 - The Wyoming Legislature passes a bill banning the death penalty for juveniles, making Wyoming one of the last states to do so before the Supreme Court banned the practice in Roper v. Simmons.
2014 - Dale Wayne Eaton becomes the last person to be removed from Wyoming’s death row when his death sentence is overturned.
2019 - A bipartisan coalition of legislators introduces a bill to abolish Wyoming’s death penalty.
2020 - Governor Mark Gordon informs legislators that he is “very seriously” considering imposing a moratorium on the state’s death penalty.
2021 - A Wyoming senate committee advances a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty to the full Senate. The state senate defeats the bill by a 4-1 vote.
Milestones in Abolition/Reinstatement
Wyoming was one of the last states to ban the execution of juvenile offenders before the Supreme Court banned the practice in Roper v. Simmons. The state legislature passed a bill banning the death penalty for juveniles in 2004.
Other Interesting Facts
The last execution in Wyoming was that of Mark Hopkinson in 1992. The death sentence of the last person on Wyoming’s death row, Dale Wayne Eaton, was overturned on November 20, 2014. Wyoming prosecutors waived the death penalty in the case on September 27, 2021.

