Mental Illness
,Executions Overview
,Lethal Injection
,Death Row
,Apr 20, 2018
Death row is aging and increasingly infirm and, as a series of recent death warrants suggest, that phenomenon is raising legal, practical, and humanitarian concerns. One year after executing 75-year-old Thomas Arthur,
Death Row
,Time on Death Row
,Jun 25, 2021
The number of prisoners on death row across the United States continues to decline while the average amount of time they have been on death row approaches 19 years, according to a new report from the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice…
Death Row
,Time on Death Row
,Dec 10, 2021
The number of people under sentence of death in the United States has fallen below 2,500 for the first time in 29 years following twenty consecutive years of decline, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). …
Death Row
,Apr 21, 2020
Seventy-nine-year-old James Frazier (pictured) is Ohio’s oldest death-row prisoner. He has dementia, he cannot walk, and he requires the assistance of aides to complete daily tasks. Because of his special medical …
Prosecutorial Accountability
,Clemency
,Upcoming Executions
,May 21, 2021
An Idaho trial court has stayed the scheduled June 2, 2021 execution of Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pictured), halting state prosecutors’ efforts to put the hospice-bound terminally ill prisoner to death before his stage…
Clemency
,Jan 04, 2022
A hospice-bound death-row prisoner has filed a motion in Idaho state court challenging the authority of Governor Brad Little to reject a pardons commission recommendation that his death sentence be commuted to lif…
Clemency
,Nov 30, 2021
The sister of a terminally ill death-row prisoner who has been in hospice care since 2019 has asked the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole to recommend that he be granted clemency so he can “die on God’s time.” In emo…
Clemency
,Aug 25, 2022
The Idaho Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s constitution permits a governor to reject clemency recommendations made by the Commission of Pardons and Parole, reversing a lower court’s decision that had blocked the state from…
Mental Illness
,Nov 10, 2020
Lawyers for James Frazier (pictured), Ohio’s oldest death-row prisoner, have filed a motion to prevent his execution, arguing that he has severe vascular dementia that has rendered him unable to understand his pun…
Mental Illness
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 04, 2019
Lawyers for federal death-row prisoner Wesley Purkey, who is scheduled to be executed on December 13, 2019, say he is incompetent to be executed because he has Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and traumatic brain injuries that …
Arbitrariness
,Race
,Jan 13, 2022
Kentucky’s death penalty is racially discriminatory, geographically arbitrary, and riddled with systemic flaws, a new study of the commonwealth’s use of capital punishment has found. The study,
Executions Overview
,Lethal Injection
,Nov 16, 2017
Having failed to find a suitable vein in which to set an intravenous execution line, Ohio called off the scheduled November 15 execution of gravely ill and physically debilitated death-row prisoner, Alva Campbell …
Clemency
,Religion
,Apr 05, 2022
Texas’ oldest death-row prisoner, Carl Wayne Buntion (pictured), has filed a petition with the state Board of Pardons and Parole seeking commutation of his death sentence to life without parole. Buntion is current…
Time on Death Row
,Apr 22, 2022
In a coincidence that brought attention to the aging of death row across the United States, the oldest death-row prisoners in Tennessee and Texas faced execution in their respective states on April 21, 2022. Afte…
Mental Illness
,United States Supreme Court
,Executions Overview
,Mar 01, 2019
The United States Supreme Court has reversed a decision of the
Mental Illness
,United States Supreme Court
,Feb 25, 2020
Vernon Madison, an Alabama death-row prisoner whose severe dementia led to a major …
