Costs
,Federal Death Penalty
,Aug 24, 2020
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…
Executions Overview
,Federal Death Penalty
,Sep 22, 2020
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…
Innocence
,Mental Illness
,Representation
,Apr 12, 2021
Nearly seven years after the botched execution of Joseph Wood put the death penalty on hold in Arizona, state officials are seeking to resume…
Conditions on Death Row
,Apr 28, 2020
UPDATE: Arizona has experienced the first known COVID-19 death-row fatality and the coronavirus is spreading on the state’s death row, lawyers for the prisoners have said. Alfonso Salazar died from the vir…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Upcoming Executions
,May 15, 2020
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has vacated a stay of execution for Missou…
Innocence
,Representation
,Upcoming Executions
,Jun 05, 2020
Texas death-row prisoner Ruben Gutierrez (pictured) has asked the Texas state courts to stay his execution because of the COVID-19 pandemic as federal litigation continues on his efforts to obtain DNA testing and …
Federal Death Penalty
,Feb 15, 2021
Inadequate testing, resistance to contact tracing, and poor social distancing practices likely made the thirteen federal executions in 2020 – 2021 COVID-19 superspreader events, the Associated Press has concluded. In the ten days af…
Arbitrariness
,Intellectual Disability
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Representation
,Federal Death Penalty
,May 18, 2020
NEWS (5/22/2020) — Washington, D.C.: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has stayed the issuance of its mandate in the federal execution-protocol lawsuit
Intellectual Disability
,Representation
,Federal Death Penalty
,Mar 22, 2021
NEWS (3/18/21) — Oklahoma: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the conviction and death sentence imposed on Alton Nolen in the September 2014 murder of a co-worker after Nole…
Representation
,United States Supreme Court
,Lethal Injection
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jun 19, 2020
NEWS (6/19/20) — California: In one of the few capital trials to move forward during the COVID-19 pandemic, a San Jose jury acquitted Manuel Anthony Lopez of charges that he had raped and murdered his girlfriend’s two-year-old son.
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,Upcoming Executions
,Nov 09, 2020
Citing the coronavirus pandemic, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has granted a temporary reprieve to death-row prisoner Pervis Payne, halting his scheduled December 3, 2020 execution. The execution was the last schedu…
Costs
,New Voices
,Apr 29, 2020
Conservative commentator Drew Johnson (pictured) has a suggestion for states whose budgets have been gutted by declining tax revenue and rising costs related to the coronavirus pandemic: end the death penalty. In an April…
Upcoming Executions
,Mar 27, 2020
The public health crisis from the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has halted executions in the United States and, legal experts say, is likely to continue to do for the …
Conditions on Death Row
,Aug 31, 2020
More prisoners in the United States have died in the coronavirus pandemic than have been executed in the country in past two decades, new prison data shows, and more California death-row prisoners have been killed by the virus tha…
Upcoming Executions
,Conditions on Death Row
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 03, 2020
New COVID-19 outbreaks on the nation’s death rows have killed prisoners in Ohio and Missouri and sickened at least 11 men on Tennessee’s death row. James Frazier (picture…
Upcoming Executions
,Executions Overview
,Jun 13, 2020
NEWS (6/12/20) — Texas: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit lifted a stay of execution the federal d…
Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 28, 2020
Saying the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) acted unlawfully in resetting Lisa Montgomery’s execution for January 12, 2021, a federal judge in Washington has for a second time blocked efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to pu…
Executions Overview
,Feb 22, 2021
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
Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 10, 2020
Eight members of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) execution team and a religious advisor have tested positive for the coronavirus after participating in the November 19 execution of Orlando Hall (pictured). The COVID-19 infections, which federa…
Clemency
,Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Dec 21, 2020
Two men scheduled for execution by the federal government in January 2021 are among the federal death-row prisoners who have tested positive for COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Lawyers for Corey Johnso…
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Sentencing Data
,May 21, 2020
The first new death sentence and first execution since public health concerns arising from the coronavirus pandemic shuttered most court proceedings across the country have highlighted several of the gravest concerns about the death penalty in the…
Conditions on Death Row
,Jul 01, 2020
Four California death-row prisoners are dead and more than 210 have been infected in a coronavirus outbreak that news reports say is “tearing through” the nation’s largest death row. Fueled by an influx of infected prison…
Upcoming Executions
,Executions Overview
,May 13, 2022
Attorneys for Georgia death-row prisoner Virgil Presnell, Jr. (pictured left, with his mother) have filed a lawsuit arguing that Attorney General Chris Carr violated a written agreement when his office set a May 1…
New Voices
,Apr 20, 2020
Jerry Givens (pictured), who performed 62 executions during his time as a Virginia corrections officer, but later became an activist against the death penalty, died April 13, 2020 of COVID-19. He was 67 years old.…
Representation
,Clemency
,Upcoming Executions
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 13, 2020
Lawyers for federal death-row prisoner Lisa Montgomery filed suit in federal district court in Washington, D.C. on November 12, seeking to stay her December 8 execution because the lead counsel in her case have contracted the coronavirus.
Costs
,New Voices
,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…
New Voices
,Lethal Injection
,Apr 13, 2020
As hospitals throughout the country face shortages of crucial medications needed to treat patients with COVID-19, a group of leading anesthesiologists, pharmacists and medical academics is asking corrections officials in death-penalty states to tu…
Innocence
,Aug 16, 2021
NBC’s true crime series, Dateline, featured an episode on August 13, 2021 on the wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration of former Philadelphia death-row prisoner Walter Ogrod (pictured). The episode, entitled “The I…
Conditions on Death Row
,Jul 20, 2020
In the latest episode of Discussions With DPIC, David Fathi, the director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, speaks with DPIC’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger about death-row conditions across the c…
Representation
,Clemency
,Upcoming Executions
,May 11, 2020
In the May 2020 edition of Discussions with DPIC, veteran capital defense lawyer Kelley Henry (pictured), who is representing several Tennessee death-row prisoners facing execution dates in 2020, speaks w…
Apr 25, 2020
NEWS (4/24/20) — California: The death penalty trial of Kori Muhammad for the killings of four people in two separate incidents ended without advancing to a penalty phase just two days after a Fresno County jury convicted him of one count …
Upcoming Executions
,Sep 16, 2020
NEWS (9/15/20) — Texas: A Bexar County trial court judge has issued an order withdrawing the death war…
Upcoming Executions
,Apr 06, 2020
NEWS (4/6/20) — Texas: A Texas trial court has rescheduled the execution of Billy Joe Wardlow from April 29, 2020 until July 8, 2020, the fourth execution in Texas that has been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Distr…
Innocence
,Mar 25, 2020
NEWS (3/25/20): Pennsylvania — Citing lack of jurisdiction, the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has vacated an emergency order it issued on Saturday that had directed the…
Secrecy
,Lethal Injection
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 08, 2021
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,
Costs
,Federal Death Penalty
,Feb 03, 2021
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 …
Upcoming Executions
,Conditions on Death Row
,Dec 30, 2020
Romell Broom (pictured), who survived a botched execution attempt in September 2009, has died on Ohio’s death row of suspected COVID-19 complications. He was 64 years old and had spent more than half his life on d…
Innocence
,Conditions on Death Row
,Mar 20, 2020
Exhibiting symptoms of the coronavirus, a Philadelphia death-row prisoner who prosecutors now acknowledge is “likely innocent” and whose potential release has been delayed by the Philadelphia …
Intellectual Disability
,Apr 13, 2021
After more than 40 years on Florida’s death row, Sonny Boy Oats (pictured), one of …
Secrecy
,Upcoming Executions
,Methods of Execution
,Nov 20, 2020
South Carolina has issued a death warrant to execute Richard Moore (pictured) on December 4, 2020, but, his lawyers say, the state has refused to tell him how it intends to carry it out. In a motion to st…
Mental Illness
,Women
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 13, 2021
After a series of rulings by the United States Supreme Court summarily vacated two stays of execution and denied attempts to reinstate two others, the federal government executed death row prisoner Lisa Montgomery…
Innocence
,Representation
,Upcoming Executions
,Apr 17, 2020
The Tennessee Supreme Court has stayed the June 4, 2020 execution of death-row prisoner Oscar Franklin Smith (pictured) and rescheduled his execution for February 4, 2021.
Upcoming Executions
,Apr 27, 2020
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the May 6, 2020 execution of Edward Busby (pictured) for sixty days. Busby’s was the nation’s seventh execution postponed in the United States because of the coronavi…
Conditions on Death Row
,May 05, 2020
Alleging that the Texas prison system is “failing to undertake take basic measures to protect [them] from the risk of disease and death” presented by the coronavirus pandemic, prisoners on the state’s death row have filed a class-…
Federal Death Penalty
,Feb 01, 2021
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…
Innocence
,Victims' Families
,New Voices
,Apr 09, 2020
Saying she wanted justice for her murdered four-year-old daughter, not “a closed case with an innocent person in jail,” Sharon Fahy has joined with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and defense lawyers in the fight to im…
Innocence
,Prosecutorial Accountability
,Jun 09, 2020
Twenty-eight years after Philadelphia prosecutors first sought to take his life for the murder of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, Walter Ogrod (pictured, second from right, with members of his defense team) has b…
