News & Developments
Crimes Punishable by Death
May 17, 2024
Tennessee Authorizes Death Penalty for Child Sexual Assault in Direct Challenge to Supreme Court Precedent
On May 9, Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee signed a bill authorizing the death penalty for aggravated rape of a child, following Florida’s passage of a similar law last year. Both laws contradict longstanding Supreme Court precedent holding the death penalty unconstitutional for non-homicide crimes. Tennessee’s law takes effect on July 1. The state has had a death penalty moratorium in place since May 2022 after Governor Lee learned that state officials had failed to test execution drugs for bacterial contamination; he ordered a subsequent independent investigation which found that…
Read MoreRace
May 16, 2024
New DPIC Report Traces Ohio’s History of Racial Violence to the Modern Use of Capital Punishment in the State
On Tuesday, the Death Penalty Information Center released a new report that connects Ohio’s racial history to the modern use of the death penalty in the state. Broken Promises: How a History of Racial Violence and Bias Shaped Ohio’s Death Penalty documents how racial discrimination is the throughline that runs from the state’s founding to its application of capital punishment today.
Read MoreHistory of the Death Penalty
May 15, 2024
“I Just Wanted…to Stay Alive”: Who was William Henry Furman, the Prisoner at the Center of a Historic Legal Decision?
Furman v. Georgia was one of the most monumental cases in American legal history: the 1972 decision overturned every state death penalty statute in the country and spared the lives of nearly six hundred people sentenced to die. But the lead petitioner, William Henry Furman, was little aware of his impact. Poor, Black, mentally ill, and physically and intellectually disabled, he was sentenced to death for the killing of a homeowner during a botched robbery, which he maintains was accidental. “If…petitioner Furman or his crime illustrates the ‘extreme,’ then nearly…
Read MoreMental Illness
May 13, 2024
Oklahoma Judge Finds Wade Lay Mentally Incompetent to Be Executed
Oklahoma prisoner Wade Lay (pictured) will not be executed on June 6, 2024 as scheduled because a Pittsburg County judge has found him mentally incompetent to be executed. “The available evidence demonstrates, by a preponderance or greater weight of the evidence, that Mr. Lay is currently incompetent to be executed according to the governing legal standards,” Judge Tim Mills wrote. Defense and state experts who examined Mr. Lay found that, due to his schizophrenia, delusions, and paranoia, he lacks a rational understanding of the reason for his execution, and the…
Read MoreMay 10, 2024
Oklahoma Court Modifies Execution Scheduling Process, Granting Attorney General’s Request to Extend the Interval Between Executions But Choosing to Set Execution Dates Individually
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled on May 7 to extend the interval between executions to occur approximately 90-days apart, specifying that executions should be scheduled for Thursdays, and that the Department of Corrections must be provided notice at least 35 days in advance. The Court also denied the Attorney General’s motion to set execution dates for groups of prisoners, as has been done in the past, instead choosing to schedule executions individually.
Read MoreRace
May 09, 2024
Articles of Interest: Los Angeles Times Editorial Board Says Systemic Racism in California Death Penalty Is Just One of Many Reasons for Abolition
In a May 7, 2024 editorial, the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board cites the deeply engrained racial disparities in the California death penalty system and how those facts led them to conclude that “even if the state could perform painless and anxiety-free executions and racial biases were eliminated, the death penalty would still be wrong.” “Black defendants were 4.6 to 8.7 times more likely to be sentenced to death than other defendants facing similar charges” the Board notes, and “Latinos were 3.2 to 6.2 times more likely to be sentenced…
Read MoreWomen
May 08, 2024
New Cardozo Law Review Article Examines the Events in the Lives of Women on U.S. Death Row
A new article, “Gender Matters: Women on Death Row in the United States,” explores the cases of 48 women who were sentenced to death in the United States between 1990 and 2023. “We believe that women’s capital sentences are best explained by examining the events of their lives within a larger social context, and by analyzing how those experiences — and the women themselves — were treated within the legal system,” said the authors, who include Sandra Babcock (pictured left), a Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, Nathalie Greenfield (middle), an Adjunct…
Read MoreInnocence
May 07, 2024
In Amicus Briefs, Conservative Officials, Oklahoma Lawmakers, and Civil Rights Groups are United in Urging the U.S. Supreme Court to Vacate Richard Glossip’s Conviction
On April 30, 2024, a week after the parties in Glossip v. Oklahoma filed merits briefs at the United States Supreme Court, several amici filed briefs in support of the parties’ joint position, asking the Court to grant Richard Glossip (pictured) a new trial. Ken Cuccinelli, the former Virginia Attorney General and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump, said in his brief that the consequences of failing to overturn Mr. Glossip’s conviction are “most dire.” During his tenure as Virginia’s Attorney General, Mr. Cuccinelli’s office “routinely reviewed…
Read MoreLethal Injection
May 06, 2024
Secret Execution Drug Supplier Confirmed, While Federal Death Penalty Reviews Continue at Department of Justice
Recent reporting by The Intercept confirms a story aired in April 2024 on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver identifying Connecticut-based Absolute Standards as the source of the execution drugs used in 13 federal executions in 2020 and 2021. Absolute Standards produces materials for calibrating research equipment, but in 2018, it applied to the Drug Enforcement Administration to be registered as a bulk producer of pentobarbital, the anesthetic used in federal executions and in many death penalty states.
Read MoreInnocence
May 03, 2024
Articles of Interest: Former Pennsylvania Death Row Prisoner Jimmy Dennis Awarded Compensation After Years-Long Legal Battle
On April 25, 2024, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania jury awarded $16 million to former death row prisoner Jimmy Dennis (pictured), who was wrongfully convicted and spent 25 years in prison. Following nine days of trial, jurors determined that the city of Philadelphia owes Mr. Dennis $10 million, and the two detectives who “engaged in malicious or wanton misconduct” owe him an additional $3 million each. Mr. Dennis was sentenced to death in 1991 for a murder he maintained he could not have committed, and in 2013, a federal judge overturned his…
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