Innocence
,Recent Legislative Activity
,Mar 30, 2020
After receiving unanimous support in the Florida House of Representatives, a bill that would have expanded access to postconviction DNA testing failed in the Florida Senate when the legislative body adjourned its 2020 legislative session without t…
Innocence
,Jun 01, 2021
California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered an independent investigation into the case of Kevin Cooper, who has consistently maintained his innocence in the 1983 quadruple-murder for which he was sentenced to dea…
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Race
,Representation
,United States Supreme Court
,Lethal Injection
,Apr 26, 2021
NEWS (4/21 – 4/23/21) — Texas: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled against Texas death-row prisoners in three separate capital appeals. On April 23, a split panel of the court …
Intellectual Disability
,Representation
,Lethal Injection
,Mar 01, 2021
NEWS (2/25/21) — Alabama: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has denied habeas relief for Alabama death-row prisoner Charles Clark, who the trial court had sentenced to death based upon a non‑u…
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.
May 17, 2021
NEWS (5/14/21) — North Carolina: A Rowan County trial judge has resentenced William Barnes to consecutive life sentences for the murders of an elderly North Carolina couple in 1992, after the county district attorney’s office
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Sep 21, 2020
NEWS (9/17/20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court has denied post-conviction relief to Ken Lott, retroactiv…
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…
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,Clemency
,Recent Legislative Activity
,Apr 02, 2021
Clemency efforts on behalf of Tennessee death-row prisoner Pervis Payne (pictured) are surging, as a petition on his behalf by The Innocence Project had collected more than 600,000 signatures by M…
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,Jan 22, 2021
Lawyers for Tennessee death-row prisoner Pervis Payne say DNA testing in his 30-year-old case points to an “unknown male” and excludes Payne as the person who stabbed to death Charisse Christopher and her 2‑y…
Innocence
,Race
,Upcoming Executions
,Jul 24, 2020
The Innocence Project and federal defenders have filed a motion in a Shelby County, Tennessee trial court seeking DNA testing of physical evidence hidden by prosecutors for 30 years that they believe will exonerate death-row priso…
Innocence
,Jul 29, 2021
When Dennis Perry stood with his defense team on the steps of the Brunswick, Georgia courthouse (pictured) after a trial judge dismissed all charges against him, he was a free man, exonerated of the racially motiv…
Innocence
,Race
,DPIC Reports
,Feb 18, 2021
New research by the Death Penalty Information Center has found 11 previously unrecorded death-row exonerations, bringing the total number of people exonerated after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death to 185. The data now show that f…
Innocence
,Representation
,New Voices
,Feb 17, 2020
DNA exonerated Ryan Matthews in 2004, after he had spent five years on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for a murder he did not commit. In December 2019, he received his college degree. “I’m…
Innocence
,Apr 05, 2021
A federal district court has ruled that Texas unconstitutionally denied DNA testing to a death-row prisoner who is alive today only because of a last-minute stay of execution granted because the state refused to allow his religious adviser to acco…
Innocence
,Jun 09, 2021
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (pictured) has filed motions in a Florida trial court seeking to block DNA testing that the local elected State Attorney had agreed to and a judge had granted in two 45-year-old Orange County…
Innocence
,May 11, 2021
Posthumous forensic testing of evidence in the case of Ledell Lee (pictured), who was executed in Arkansas in 2017, has found DNA from an unidentified male on a bloody club used to kill Debra Reese 29 years ago an…
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,May 22, 2020
Johnny Lee Gates (pictured) is free, 43 years after being sentenced to death in Georgia for a murder he has steadfastly maintained he did not commit. On May 15, 2020, Gates entered a so-called “Alford…
Victims' Families
,Jan 29, 2020
Georgia executed Donnie Lance on January 29, 2020 after his requests for DNA testing and a plea for clemency supported by the children he and murder victim Joy Lance shared were denied. Lance was convicted …
Innocence
,Sentencing Alternatives
,Upcoming Executions
,Executions Overview
,Jan 13, 2020
On January 16, Georgia plans to execute Jimmy Meders (pictured in his National Guard uniform), a man whom jurors say they would have sentenced to l…
Innocence
,Intellectual Disability
,Race
,Mar 16, 2020
More than forty years after he was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white Columbus, Georgia jury for the rape and murder of a 19-year-old white woman, Johnny Lee Gates (pictured) will be getting a new trial. On March 13,…
Innocence
,Jan 29, 2020
In its unprecedented rush to execute eight prisoners over an eleven-day period in April 2017, Arka…
Innocence
,Clemency
,Aug 22, 2017
Calling a sentence of death “the ultimate, permanent punishment,” Missouri Governor Eric Greitens (pictured) has stayed the execution of Marcellus Williams “in light of new information” that Willi…
Innocence
,Mar 10, 2020
Paul Hildwin, whose death sentence was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989 …
Innocence
,Feb 07, 2020
The last three men scheduled for execution in Georgia said they did not commit the killing and that DNA testing that was not available at the time of trial could prove it. In two of the cases, victim family members supported the r…
Innocence
,Oct 25, 2016
Sherman Brown (pictured), a man who was sentenced to death in Virginia in 1970 for the murder of a 4‑year-old boy, has filed a writ of actual innocence with the Virginia Supreme Court saying that DNA testing on re…
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,Feb 05, 2021
Lawyers for the daughter of a man executed by Tennessee have asked a state appeals court to permit DNA testing that could prove his innocence. In a virtual hearing before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals on February 3, 2021 (see
