More from The Appeal:
Virginia may soon become the 23rd state to abolish capital punishment.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Jan 29, 2021
While bans on capital punishment progress at the state level, the federal government is racing to carry out three more executions before President Trump's term end. Ten people have been put to death since July, the first such executions since 2003.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Jan 08, 2021
McAuliffe is running to become Virginia governor a second time. If he wins, he would be the only active Democratic governor to have carried out executions in office.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Dec 11, 2020
Nelson’s attorneys had sought to have his death sentence reversed, citing critical errors by his original trial attorneys.
Lauren Gill Aug 28, 2020
It’s the first time in modern history that the federal government has executed a Native American for a crime committed against another Native American on tribal land, his attorneys say.
Lauren Gill Aug 26, 2020
The execution of Mitchell against the will of the Navajo Nation only perpetuates the U.S.’s dreadful history of colonial violence and oppression of Indigenous peoples.
Ruth Hopkins Aug 19, 2020
Honken, convicted of the murders of five people, died by lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The federal government resumed executions this week for the first time since 2003.
Lauren Gill Jul 17, 2020
In a 5-4 ruling early today, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the lethal injection of Wesley Ira Purkey. Lawyers had argued that killing Purkey, who had dementia associated with Alzheimer's disease, would represent cruel and unusual punishment.
Lauren Gill Jul 16, 2020
A late-night Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, despite his claims of innocence and his attorneys’ belief that DNA testing could show he was wrongly convicted.
Lauren Gill Jul 14, 2020
Attorney General Bill Barr has scheduled executions for four people on federal death row in July and August. That’s more federal executions in one month than in the entire modern history of the federal death penalty.
Ben Cohen Jul 13, 2020
A government psychologist who used the tool to evaluate Daniel Lewis Lee—who is scheduled to die Monday in Indiana—has since disavowed it. Without it, the trial judge has written that it’s ‘very questionable’ Lee would have been sentenced to death.
Lauren Gill Jul 10, 2020
A civil rights advocate calls the scheduled executions of four men ‘appalling’ and a return to a ‘biased, arbitrary, and error-prone’ system.
Lauren Gill Jun 16, 2020
Attorneys argued for decades that Bobby Moore was intellectually disabled when he was sentenced to death in 1980. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling led to a change in his sentence last year and cleared the way for his release.
Lauren Gill Jun 09, 2020
If the U.S. Supreme Court or the state’s governor doesn’t step in, Barton’s would be the first execution carried out in the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lauren Gill May 19, 2020
Attorneys say the prosecution’s theory of the murder case was ‘concocted out of whole cloth’ and based on ‘outdated racial stereotyping.’
Steven Hale Apr 29, 2020
Sharon Fahy, whose daughter was murdered in 1988, asked the court to release Walter Ogrod, the man convicted in her killing.
Lauren Gill Apr 09, 2020
‘It was almost like they were going to do whatever they could to demean him and take away his dignity,’ Woods’s spiritual adviser said.
Beth Shelburne Mar 25, 2020
Prosecutors say Walter Ogrod is ‘likely innocent’ of the charges that sent him to prison in 1996. Now, his attorney says, ‘every day a decision and/or hearing is delayed is another day that Mr. Ogrod’s health is at grave risk.’
Lauren Gill Mar 20, 2020
Josie Duffy Rice and guest co-host Darnell Moore focus on the death penalty as they talk with State Attorney Aramis Ayala of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida.
Mar 18, 2020
John Hummel was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday. The court, citing the current health crisis, has postponed the execution for 60 days.
Lauren Gill Mar 16, 2020
‘I think everyone involved— the governor, the attorney general, the DOC commissioner—everyone knew it,’ his lawyer said.
Lauren Gill Mar 06, 2020
Nathaniel Woods, who was convicted in connection with the deaths of three Birmingham police officers in 2004, is ‘100 percent innocent,’ the man who shot the officers told The Appeal.
Lauren Gill Feb 24, 2020
Across the country, the death penalty is in steep decline. But in September, the state’s attorney general sought execution dates for nine men, and its Supreme Court set dates for two of them.
Steven Hale Feb 18, 2020
With Jordan Smith and Liliana Segura of The Intercept.
Adam H. Johnson Feb 13, 2020
Lee’s family wants officials in Jacksonville, Arkansas, to turn over evidence that was used to convict and sentence him to death. The family says that evidence could posthumously exonerate him.
Lauren Gill Jan 23, 2020
In Franklin County, experts say Ron O’Brien’s capital cases—which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars— amount to ‘just taxpayer money being lit on fire.’
Joshua Vaughn Dec 05, 2019
With Appeal staff reporter Lauren Gill
Adam H. Johnson Nov 14, 2019
Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama have all authorized the practice in capital punishment. So what happens now?
Lauren Gill Oct 25, 2019
Informants are highly motivated to lie. But jurors don’t always have the information or skills to discern the truth.
Alexandra Natapoff Sep 23, 2019
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that his execution, which experts have said will be bloody and gruesome, does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment. But problems with his case started long before that, his attorneys say.
Lauren Gill Sep 20, 2019
Kim Ogg ran as a reform-minded district attorney candidate, but her office has sought two death warrants for Dexter Johnson, whose lawyer says cannot name everyday objects and has an IQ of 70.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Sep 10, 2019
Police in Ozark said they solved the 1999 murders of two teenage girls using a genealogy database. But Coley McCraney‘s attorneys say that the case against their client is far from certain.
Lauren Gill Jul 24, 2019
Larry Krasner says the punishment is ‘really about poverty’ and race.
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Jul 15, 2019
Since 2017, LaToni Daniel has been incarcerated pretrial in a capital murder case. During that time, Daniel became pregnant, and she just delivered a baby boy. But as she brings in new life, she also faces the death penalty.
Lauren Gill May 31, 2019
Patrick Murphy didn’t even learn about the murder until later that day. A controversial law allows him to be executed anyway.
Katie Rose Quandt Mar 28, 2019
California amended its felony murder law, which holds accomplices responsible for murder. But reform won’t reach a man sentenced to death in a deadly robbery—even though he was never accused of firing a shot.
Maura Ewing Feb 04, 2019
Victims’ rights campaign spent more than $70 million nationwide, with more than half of that spent in Florida.
Melissa Gira Grant Nov 07, 2018
A single training document uncovered in a prosecutor’s files could save Russell William Tucker’s life.
Jacob Biba Sep 04, 2018