Death Penalty News and Developments for December 2 — December 8, 2019

DPIC Analysis: With the U.S. Supreme Court’s February 6 rul­ing deny­ing the Department of Justice’s appli­ca­tion to vacate the fed­er­al-exe­cu­tion injunc­tions, more death war­rants will have been blocked by stays of exe­cu­tion or judi­cial injunc­tions in 2019 than will have been car­ried out. As of December 8, DPIC was aware of 65 death war­rants issued by 11 states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that sched­uled exe­cu­tion dates for 2019. Courts have stayed or enjoined 24 of those war­rants, while 21 exe­cu­tions have been car­ried out. One death war­rant is still pend­ing. 13 oth­er sched­uled exe­cu­tions have been halt­ed by reprieve, 3 were ren­dered moot by the pris­on­er’s death while still on death row, and 3 oth­er war­rants were withdrawn.

If Travis Runnels is exe­cut­ed by Texas on December 11, he will be the 22^nd exe­cu­tion in the U.S. this year. That will be the sec­ond low­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions in the nation since 1991, trail­ing only the 20 exe­cu­tions car­ried out in 2016.

NEWS — December 5: The Florida Supreme Court upheld the con­vic­tion of death-row pris­on­er Joseph Jordan. The low­er court had pre­vi­ous­ly over­turned Jordan’s death sen­tence because the jury’s vote for death had not been unan­i­mous. The case now returns to the tri­al court for a new sentencing trial.