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…
Lethal Injection
,Jun 01, 2022
Autopsies of the four men executed by Oklahoma between October 2021 and February 2022 show that all four prisoners had excess fluid in their lungs, giving additional credence to death-row prisoners’ claims that Oklahoma’s lethal-injection process …
Botched Executions
,Lethal Injection
,Feb 14, 2022
Autopsy results for an Oklahoma death-row prisoner whose execution state officials claimed “was carried out … without complication” have confirmed eyewitness reports that John Grant likely suffered a torturous de…
Representation
,United States Supreme Court
,Lethal Injection
,Apr 05, 2021
NEWS (3/31/21) — Florida: After finding that Florida death-row prisoner William Greg Thomas was entitled to present an untimely habeas corpus petition because his prior lawyer had abandoned him, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh C…
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.
United States Supreme Court
,Lethal Injection
,Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 12, 2020
NEWS (10/5/20) — Washington, D.C.: The 2020 – 2021 U.S. Supreme Court term opened on October 5 with the Court declining to review challenges to more than 30 death-penalty court decisions. The only death-pen…
Secrecy
,Lethal Injection
,Dec 02, 2020
Saying that the state lacked the ability to carry out a lethal injection, the South Carolina Supreme Court has stayed the scheduled December 4, 2020 execution of Richard Moore (pictured). With no state executions …
Lethal Injection
,Mar 11, 2021
Five civil rights organizations have asked a California appeals court to block the efforts of three county district attorneys to lift stays of execution agreed to by the state as part of a federal-court settlement of death-row pri…
Secrecy
,Botched Executions
,Lethal Injection
,Jun 03, 2022
Court records from a lawsuit brought by Tennessee death-row prisoners have revealed widespread irregularities in the state’s execution practices. A series of four articles published in the Nashville newspaper, The Ten…
Lethal Injection
,Feb 16, 2022
Nevada prosecutors have failed to meet a deadline to obtain a death warrant to execute Zane Floyd before its supply of a key lethal-injection drug expires, indefinitely extending the near 16-year pause between exe…
Executions Overview
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 06, 2021
In a memorandum that left to Congress the task of addressing systemic questions of arbitrariness, racial discrimination, and wrongful convictions affecting the administration of the federal death penalty, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garl…
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…
Lethal Injection
,Mar 10, 2022
A six-day federal trial on the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s lethal-injection protocol has concluded, with medical experts for the state’s death-row prisoners citing autopsy and eyewitness evidence to call the process “torturous…
Lethal Injection
,Aug 06, 2020
Long-running execution lawsuits have settled in Arizona and California, as a renewed challenge to the state’s revised lethal-injection protocol has ramped up in Oklahoma. The Arizona set…
Botched Executions
,Lethal Injection
,Oct 29, 2021
Oklahoma’s legacy of botched executions has continued to grow, as media witnesses to the October 28, 2021 execution of John Grant (pictured) reported that Grant suffered repeated convulsions and vomited over a nea…
United States Supreme Court
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 17, 2020
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 r…
Federal Death Penalty
,Sep 23, 2020
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 fed…
Lethal Injection
,Jun 09, 2022
Judge Stephen Friot (pictured) of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma has ruled that Oklahoma’s lethal-injection protocol is constitutional. After holding a week-long hearing on the state…
Secrecy
,New Voices
,Executions Overview
,May 20, 2022
After 37 years of silence, a South Carolina prison doctor who was in the execution chamber when eight prisoners it was his duty to treat were put to death has for the first time publicly discussed his conflicting roles. I…
Intellectual Disability
,Lethal Injection
,Jul 05, 2019
A Kentucky trial court has issued an order declaring the Commonwealth’s execution protocol unconstitutional. It was …
Arbitrariness
,Executions Overview
,Methods of Execution
,Lethal Injection
,Aug 02, 2013
On August 1, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced its remaining supply of pentobarbital, used for lethal injections, expires in September, and it is unsure where to obtain more. The drug’s manufacturer, Lundb…
Recent Legislative Activity
,Aug 18, 2020
Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts has vetoed a bill that would have increased transparency in the state’s execution process.
Lethal Injection
,Feb 11, 2022
At least three Nevada execution personnel backed out of participating in Zane Floyd’s (pictured, right) execution after a U.S. district judge asked about their education and training. The personnel, including a doctor and two emer…
Lethal Injection
,Jun 21, 2021
The Nevada Department of Corrections (NVDOC) intends to execute death-row prisoner Zane Floyd with a three- or four-drug combination that has never been used before to put a prisoner to death. In a proposed execut…
Lethal Injection
,Nov 09, 2021
Nevada prosecutors have asked a federal judge to expedite a decision on the constitutionality of the state’s execution process, saying accelerated review is necessary if the state is to execute Zane Floyd before …
Human Rights
,Apr 11, 2023
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), with the support of the Foreign Office of the Federal Government of Germany, recently undertook a project examining the U.S. death penalty through a human rights lens. DPIC has added a series of
Religion
,Upcoming Executions
,Jun 17, 2020
NEWS (6/16/20) — Washington, D.C.: The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed the execution of Ruben Gutierrez over concerns about the refusal by the state of Texas to allow a chaplain to accompany Gutierrez in the execution chamber.
Methods of Execution
,Lethal Injection
,Sep 25, 2020
A new National Public Radio (NPR) analysis of more than 200 autopsies of death-row prisoners executed by lethal injection has found that 84% of those executed showed evidence of pulmonary edema, a condition in which a person’s lun…
Lethal Injection
,Oct 19, 2021
Ohio administrative law mandates that government agencies comply with specific procedural requirements whenever they adopt internal management rules or rules “having a uniform and general application.” The Ohio Supreme Court held that the protocol…
Lethal Injection
,Oct 16, 2020
A divided Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeals of two death-row prisoners who are challenging the legality of the state’s execution protocol. By votes of 4 – 3, the court on October 13, 2020 accepted for review appeals …
Executions Overview
,Feb 18, 2022
When Oklahoma executed Gilbert Postelle on February 17, 2022, it came with a dubious distinction. The intellectually impaired man who was 18 years old at the time of his offense became the 44th person …
Clemency
,Upcoming Executions
,Botched Executions
,Lethal Injection
,Dec 07, 2021
Oklahoma executed Bigler Jobe Stouffer II (pictured, at his clemency hearing) on December 9, 2021, after Governor Kevin Stitt rejecting a pardons board recommendation to commute his sentence to li…
United States Supreme Court
,Executions Overview
,Botched Executions
,Lethal Injection
,Oct 28, 2021
Within hours of a partisan vote in the United States Supreme Court lifting an appeals court stay, Oklahoma executed John Grant on October 28, 2021, ending a six-year hiatus brought on by a series …
Lethal Injection
,Aug 13, 2021
An Oklahoma federal judge has ordered a trial in a suit filed by the state’s death-row prisoners challenging the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s three-drug lethal-injection process. Judge Stephen Friot of the U.S. District Court f…
Lethal Injection
,Feb 10, 2022
Oklahoma is paying $15,000 per execution, plus $1,000 for each day of training, to an unnamed doctor to participate in the process of putting state prisoners to death. Under the agreement, the doctor stood to receive an estimated …
United States Supreme Court
,Lethal Injection
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jun 25, 2020
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 f…
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…
Executions Overview
,Lethal Injection
,Jun 23, 2022
Tennessee executions could be on hold for years, as the state conducts an independent investigation into widespread non-compliance with its execution protocol and litigates the constitutionality of revisions expected to be made to…
Executions Overview
,Botched Executions
,Lethal Injection
,Jan 17, 2023
Tennessee will not resume executions until it fixes systemic problems with the administration of its execution protocol, Governor Bill Lee has announced. “It’s a very important issue that has to be done correctly,…
Innocence
,Upcoming Executions
,Lethal Injection
,Apr 13, 2022
A Nashville trial judge has denied a Tennessee death-row prisoner’s motion to reopen his case and halt his scheduled April 21, 2022 execution in light of new DNA evidence. In a motion filed April 4, 2022,…
Mental Illness
,Executions Overview
,Jun 30, 2021
Texas executed John Hummel on June 30, 2021, an honorably discharged former Marine with service-related trauma whose trial lawyer now works for the prosecutor who was trying to execute him. Hummel had com…
Executions Overview
,Lethal Injection
,Federal Death Penalty
,Apr 07, 2020
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…
Mental Illness
,Representation
,Victims' Families
,Upcoming Executions
,Federal Death Penalty
,Jun 16, 2020
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 dea…
