Entries tagged with “2020 Federal Executions”
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 11, 2022
In New Report, Amnesty International Urges President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty and Commute All Federal Death Sentences
A new report by the human rights organization Amnesty International urges President Joe Biden to act upon his campaign pledge to work to abolish the death penalty by exercising his constitutional authority to commute the sentences of all federal death row prisoners. The report, titled The Power of Example: Whither the Biden Death Penalty Promise?, was released on June 27, 2022, just two days before the 50th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia, which…
Executions
Executions Overview
,Feb 22, 2021
DPIC Analysis: U.S. Enters Longest Period in 40 Years Without Any State Carrying Out an Execution
The United States has entered the longest period in 40 years without any state carrying out an execution, an analysis of data in the Death Penalty Information Center execution database has found. On February 18, 2021, the U.S. reached 225 days since Texas executed Billy Wardlow on July 8, 2020, the last state execution conducted since the COVID-19 pandemic. That interval surpassed the 224 days between the September 25, 2007 execution of Michael Richard in Texas and the May 6, 2008 execution of…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Feb 03, 2021
Records Disclose Taxpayers Picked Up a Nearly Million Dollar Price Tag for Each Federal Execution
The Federal Bureau of Prisons spent nearly $4.7 million dollars on the first five executions carried out by the Trump administration in July and August 2020, according to redacted government financial records recently obtained by the ACLU. The government’s January 2021 disclosures in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, detailed the extraordinarily high price tag absorbed by taxpayers as a result of the administration’s choice to conduct executions during the worst global…
State & Federal Info
Federal Death Penalty
,Feb 01, 2021
Under Court Order Requiring Protective Measures, Federal Bureau of Prisons Takes No Action After Media Witnesses to Executions Contract COVID-19
Despite being under federal court order to undertake protective measures against the spread of COVID-19, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) took no action after being alerted that two reporters who had been media witnesses to the federal executions at the Federal Correctional Complex at Terre Haute, Indiana in January 2021 had contracted COVID-19. Emails obtained by the Death Penalty Information Center (see pictures) show that Indiana Public Media reporter George Hale notified Bureau of…
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 29, 2021
Legitimacy and the Rule of Law: Supreme Court’s Institutional Standing Damaged by Rulings During Federal Execution Spree
From July 14, 2020 through January 16, 2021, the federal government executed thirteen prisoners. It was the most consecutive executions by a single jurisdiction since the U.S. death penalty resumed in the 1970s and the longest period of time in which an execution spree by any government went unabated while no other jurisdiction executed anyone. During that time, the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly intervened to facilitate executions, despite numerous disputed issues of material fact and…
Issues
Native Americans
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 18, 2021
‘This is Not Justice’ — Federal Execution Spree Ends with Planned Execution of African-American on Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday
An historically aberrant six-month federal execution spree came to a close after midnight on January 16, 2021 when an African-American man who was scheduled to die on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was put to death by private executioners hired in a secret no-bid contract. Dustin John Higgs (pictured), who did not kill anyone and professed his innocence prior to his execution, was pronounced dead at 1:23 a.m. The execution moved forward after six justices of the U.S. Supreme…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 14, 2021
Federal Government Executes Corey Johnson, Who was Likely Intellectually Disabled, Without Any Judicial Review of His Eligibility for the Death Penalty
For the second time in less than five weeks, the federal government has executed a death-row prisoner who likely was intellectually disabled, without affording him judicial review to determine his eligibility for the death penalty. Corey Johnson (pictured) was pronounced dead from lethal injection at 11:34 p.m. on January 14, 2021, the 12th federal prisoner executed in six months and the fifth in the transition period between Donald Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 presidential election and…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 08, 2021
ProPublica Investigation Reveals Irregularities in Federal Executions
The federal government’s historically aberrant execution spree has been fraught with irregularities and “has trampled over an array of barriers, both legal and practical,” according to an investigative report by the non-profit news organization, ProPublica. In a December 23, 2020 news story by reporter Isaac Arnsdorf, based upon an analysis of court records, ProPublica details a pattern of government secrecy, deceit, and misconduct during the course of conducting more executions in five months…
State & Federal Info
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 05, 2021
Federal Death Row Counselor Removed from Position After Allegedly Trolling Anti-Death Penalty Activist and Mocking Prisoners
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has removed a senior prison official from his position as a death-row counselor in the wake of charges that he used an anonymous Twitter account to troll a death-penalty activist and to mock federal death-row prisoners. Andrew Sutton, a Special Confinement Unit (SCU) Counselor at the Federal Correctional Complex — Terre Haute, was quietly reassigned after he was linked to a Twitter account named fozzythebear that, a lawsuit alleges, disparaged, defamed, and…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 08, 2020
Jurors and Appellate Prosecutor Say Teen Offender Brandon Bernard Should Not be Executed
As the December 10, 2020 execution date of federal death-row prisoner Brandon Bernard (pictured with his family) approached, jurors and a former prosecutor in his case came forward saying that the teen offender’s life should be spared. Bernard, who was 18 years old at the time of the offense, became the youngest offender executed by the federal government in at least 68 years. Five of the nine surviving trial jurors in Bernard’s case provided his defense team with videotaped statements or…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 18, 2020
DPIC Analysis: Federal Government to Conduct First Lame-Duck Federal Executions in More Than a Century
In a dramatic deviation from historical practices, the Trump Administration is poised to conduct the first federal executions during a lame-duck presidency in more than a century. The Department of Justice has scheduled three federal executions during the administration’s lame-duck period: Orlando Hall on November 19, Lisa Montgomery on December 8, and Brandon Bernard on December 10. The last time the U.S. government carried out an execution between a presidential election and the inauguration…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 17, 2020
Lawyers for Orlando Hall Seek to Stay His Execution Based Upon Systemic and Case-Specific Evidence of Racial Discrimination
Lawyers for federal death-row prisoner Orlando Hall (pictured), who is scheduled to be executed on November 19, 2020, have filed a motion to stay his execution based upon evidence that his death sentence was a product of pervasive racial discrimination. In pleadings filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on November 12, Hall, who is Black, argues that his conviction and death sentence are the unconstitutional product of systemic racial discrimination in the…
Executions
Federal Death Penalty
,Sep 23, 2020
Federal Government Conducts Sixth and Seventh Executions Amid Continuing Litigation Over COVID-19 and the Legality of Its Execution Protocol
The federal government conducted its sixth and seventh executions in ten weeks on September 22 and 24, putting William Emmett LeCroy (pictured) and Christopher Vialva to death amid continuing challenges to the federal execution protocol and to carrying out executions during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the federal appeal courts set aside LeCroy’s execution challenges, Vialva’s lawsuit challenging the legality of the federal execution protocol remained pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. After the…
Executions
Executions Overview
,Federal Death Penalty
,Sep 22, 2020
ACLU: Documents Show Federal Executions Likely Caused Prison COVID-19 Outbreak
Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act show that the federal government’s choice to bring hundreds of people to the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana to carry out five executions in July and August in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic likely caused a COVID-19 outbreak that has already killed three and hospitalized others. In a statement issued September 21, 2020, the ACLU blasted federal officials for repeatedly carrying…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Sep 18, 2020
Psychologist Raises Concerns About Upcoming Federal Execution for Crimes Committed as a Teenager
The federal government intends to execute Christopher Vialva (pictured) on September 24, 2020, the first time in nearly 70 years it will have put any teenage offender to death. But according to a prominent cognitive neuropsychologist, the decision to execute Vialva is out of step with what science now knows about the workings of the adolescent brain. Vialva was 19 years old when he and four co-defendants, aged 15, 16, 16, and 18, killed a Texas couple during a carjacking and robbery. In a…
Executions
Executions Overview
,Federal Death Penalty
,Aug 28, 2020
News Brief — Federal Government Executes Keith Nelson
NEWS (8/28/20) — The federal government executed Keith Nelson on August 28. He was the fifth federal prisoner to be executed in 2020. Nelson’s execution had been put on hold several times as a result of preliminary injunctions issued in response to execution challenges brought by death-row prisoners Daniel Lee and Wesley Purkey. However, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated those injunctions prior to Lee’s and Purkey’s executions in July. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted…
Executions
Native Americans
,Federal Death Penalty
,Aug 27, 2020
Ignoring Tribal Sovereignty, Federal Government Executes Native American Death-Row Prisoner Lezmond Mitchell
Over the objections of Native American leaders across the country, the federal government on August 26, 2020 executed Lezmond Mitchell (pictured), the sole Native-American prisoner on federal death row. Mitchell, a Navajo citizen, became the first Native American executed by the federal government for a crime committed against a member of his own tribe on tribal lands. The Navajo Nation government has long opposed the death penalty as inconsistent with its culture and traditions and repeatedly…
Executions
Federal Death Penalty
,Aug 26, 2020
Autopsy Results Provide ‘Virtual Medical Certainty’ that Prisoners will Experience ‘Excruciating Pain’ During Federal Executions
As the federal government began to carry out the second round of executions it has scheduled for 2020, autopsy results from the first round of executions in July suggest to a “virtual medical certainty” that federal death-row prisoners will experience “excruciating pain” while they are being put to death by lethal injection with pentobarbital. An autopsy of Wesley Purkey (pictured), authorized by Purkey’s next-of-kin and conducted by Western Michigan University forensic pathologist Joyce L.
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Aug 24, 2020
ACLU Lawsuit Seeks Information on Cost and Public Health Risks of Federal Executions
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and American Civil Liberties Foundation have filed a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) seeking a court order requiring the BOP to disclose how much the federal government’s resumption of federal executions is costing taxpayers and what steps the government has undertaken to assess and address the COVID-19 public health risks created by the executions. “As the nation faces both dire public health and economic crises,” the lawsuit says…
Death Row
Native Americans
,Federal Death Penalty
,Aug 20, 2020
As Courts Deny Execution Challenges, Native Americans Nationwide Call for Clemency for Federal Death-Row Prisoner Lezmond Mitchell
As federal courts in Washington, D.C. and California declined to halt the execution of Lezmond Mitchell, the National Congress of American Indians, thirteen tribal governments, and more than 230 members from more than 90 U.S. tribes joined Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez in asking President Donald Trump to commute the death sentence of the sole Native American on federal death row. Native-American commentators also called on the president to spare Mitchell’s life, saying his execution…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Aug 02, 2020
NEWS BRIEF — Federal Government, Texas Set New Execution Dates
As July 2020 came to a close, the federal government issued two more notices of execution and a county judge in Texas reportedly issued a new death warrant for a death-row prisoner whose previously scheduled execution had been stayed. In a July 31 news release, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had set execution dates of September 22, 2020 for William LeCroy and September 24, 2020 for Christopher Vialva. LeCroy was sentenced to death in the U.S. District Court for the Northern…
Issues
Victims' Families
,Upcoming Executions
,Native Americans
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 30, 2020
Over Tribal Objection, U.S. Government Sets New Execution Date for Sole Native American on Federal Death Row
The U.S. government has set an August 26, 2020 execution date for the sole Native American on federal death row, against the wishes of his tribe, the victims’ family, and the local U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted the case. On July 29, 2020, the Federal Bureau of Prisons issued a notice of execution to Lezmond Mitchell, a member of the Navajo Nation convicted of the stabbing deaths of a woman and her nine-year-old granddaughter on tribal lands. If the execution is carried out, it would…
Issues
Victims' Families
,Executions Overview
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 27, 2020
Victims’ Family Says They Were Retraumatized by Government’s Conduct During Federal Executions
When Attorney General William Barr announced in July 2019 that the federal government planned to resume federal executions by putting to death Daniel Lewis Lee, the Department of Justice press release announcing the death warrants trumpeted that “we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.” But the family of Nancy Mueller (pictured) and her eight-year-old daughter Sarah Powell — murder victims in Lee’s case — had long opposed his…
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 17, 2020
Federal Government Carries Out Third Execution in One Week, As Challenges to Execution Protocol Fail
The United States government carried out its third execution in four days on July 17, 2020, executing Dustin Honken (pictured). The week’s executions doubled the number of prisoners the government has put to death since Congress reauthorized the federal death penalty in 1988. With overnight U.S. Supreme Court rulings vacating injunctions that would have halted the July 14 and 16 executions of Daniel Lee and Wesley Purkey, few legal avenues had remained for Honken to challenge his execution.
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 16, 2020
U.S. Government Hurriedly Executes Wesley Purkey After Overnight Rulings by U.S. Supreme Court Vacate Two Injunctions and a Stay of Execution
For the second time in three days, the United States government has executed a prisoner after a 5 – 4 overnight decision of the U.S. Supreme Court short-circuited judicial review of significant legal claims and after the original death warrant setting his execution date had expired. Wesley Ira Purkey was executed at the United States Penitentiary Terre Haute and pronounced dead at 8:19 a.m. on July 16, 2020, more than 15 hours after the time the Federal Bureau of Prisons had set for a scheduled…
Issues
Religion
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 15, 2020
Wesley Purkey Execution Temporarily Halted as Challenges Pending on Mental Competency, Health Danger to Religious Advisor, and Ineffective Representation
Lawyers for Wesley Purkey (pictured), the second of three federal death-row prisoners scheduled to be executed during the week of July 13, are seeking to halt his execution, arguing that mental illness and dementia have left him mentally incompetent. As Purkey challenges the constitutionality of his execution, his spiritual advisor, Rev. Dale Hartkemeyer, is seeking to move back the execution until the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. Hartkemeyer’s lawsuit asserts that conducting the execution…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 14, 2020
Federal Government Ends Death Penalty Hiatus With Rushed Early-Morning Execution of Daniel Lee
The U.S. federal government ended its 17-year hiatus between executions on July 14, 2020, putting Daniel Lewis Lee (pictured) to death moments after overnight rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated prior court orders that had placed the execution on hold. Two more executions are scheduled this week, with a fourth set for August. Although Lee’s death warrant expired at midnight on July 13, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) attempted to…
Issues
Victims' Families
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 13, 2020
Chaos Surrounds Attempts to Resume Federal Executions
As the U.S. Department of Justice seeks to resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus, the government’s rushed timeframe, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and unresolved issues involving the lethal-injection protocol, and the victims’ family’s rights have combined with alleged constitutional violations in the cases of the three prisoners slated for execution this week to produce a chaotic whirlwind of last-minute litigation. Federal courts facing compressed timelines have issued rulings…
Executions
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 13, 2020
Federal execution updates
Last Updated: January 16, 2021 1:35am. January 2021 Scheduled Executions The federal government has rescheduled the execution of Lisa Montgomery for January 12th and scheduled the executions of Corey Johnson (January 14th) and Dustin Higgs (January 15th) for the same week. Prisoner Coronavirus Litigation Federal prisoners Patrick R. Smith and Brandon S. Holm filed a class-action lawsuit in an Indiana federal district court on November 25th to halt the December 2020 federal executions. The…
Issues
Religion
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 10, 2020
Op-Eds Highlight Disparities in Federal Death Penalty, as 1,000 Faith Leaders and the European Union Urge Justice Department to Halt Executions
As the scheduled July 13, 2020 date for the first federal executions in 17 years approaches, faith leaders, diplomats, and legal experts have asked the federal government to call them off. 1,000 faith leaders from across the country have urged President Trump and Attorney General Barr to halt the executions. They are joined by the European Union, which on July 10 also issued a statement strongly opposing the resumption of federal executions. Complementing their efforts, two recent op-eds by…
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Jun 29, 2020
U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Execution Protocol Case, Removing Barrier to Resumption of Federal Executions
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to the federal execution protocol, removing a potential major obstacle to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) plan to resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. The decision leaves in place an April 2020 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that lifted an injunction that had halted federal executions. The Department has scheduled four executions in July and August. The Court offered no explanation…
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Jun 25, 2020
Regulatory Experts Ask Supreme Court to Overturn Ruling Lifting Injunction on Federal Executions
A group of 15 administrative law experts have filed an amicus curiae brief in support of death-row prisoners seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of a challenge to the federal government’s proposed execution protocol. The brief was filed June 19, 2020 in Roane v. Barr, a case brought by federal death-row prisoners asking the Court to overturn an appellate court’s ruling that lifted an injunction on federal executions. According to the amicus brief, “This case presents a trifecta of classic…
Issues
Victims' Families
,Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jun 16, 2020
With Litigation Pending in U.S. Supreme Court, Federal Government Issues Four Death Warrants
With a petition for review pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on the legality and constitutionality of the federal execution protocol, U.S. Attorney General William Barr on June 15, 2020 set execution dates for four federal death-row prisoners, including three who are involved in the pending case. The warrants scheduled three executions over a five-day period in July and a fourth execution in late August. No federal executions have been carried out since 2003, and the five execution dates…
Executions
Executions Overview
,Federal Death Penalty
,Apr 07, 2020
U.S. Court of Appeals Lifts Injunction on Federal Executions, Returns Case to Lower Court for Further Litigation
A badly divided federal court of appeals has lifted a court order that had prevented the federal government from resuming executions after a hiatus of more than 16 years. In a fractured ruling with three separate opinions and no rationale for its decision commanding a majority, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2 – 1 on April 7, 2020 to vacate the preliminary injunction that had blocked the federal government from carrying out four executions in…