State And Federal Info
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.
The last execution in Wyoming was that of Mark Hopkinson in 1992.
Costs
Oct 21, 2020
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. In an October 17 op-ed in the Casper Star Tri…
Costs
Aug 14, 2020
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. In…
Costs
Jul 21, 2020
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 pen…
Crimes Punishable by Death
Dec 23, 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
Recent Legislative Activity
Oct 29, 2019
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 d…
Federal Death Penalty
Jul 22, 2019
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
Recent Legislative Activity
Feb 19, 2019
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 – buoye…
Recent Legislative Activity
Jan 23, 2019
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
Costs
Jan 05, 2016
Natrona County, Wyoming District Attorney Mike Blonigen (pictured) recently called for a reconsideration of the state’s death penalty after a federal judge overturned the death sentence of Dale Wayne Eaton, a decade after Blonigen…
Sentencing Alternatives
Oct 09, 2013
Wyoming’s Casper Star-Tribune recently pointed out why many families of murder victims favor life-without-parole sentences over the death penalty . “[I]t may be a surprise that many families of murder victims prefer the l…
