Death Penalty

Alabama plans to execute Kenneth Smith next month by suffocating him with nitrogen. But the new method is untested—since I’m supposed to be in the room with Kenny when he dies, the state has warned me I might die too.

Georgia is the strictest state in America when it comes to proving intellectual disability in capital cases. This month, the Supreme Court could save the life of a man who says he is mentally disabled—or let the state kill him.

Virginia may soon become the 23rd state to abolish capital punishment.

More than 35 members of Congress signed a letter asking Biden to commute the sentences of the remaining 50 people on federal death row.

Dubious DNA evidence—and a potential coverup by the Travis County DA’s office—are at the heart of a judge’s recommendation that Areli Escobar gets a new trial.

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.

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.

A reasonable society does not meet trauma with more trauma in the name of justice.

Nelson’s attorneys had sought to have his death sentence reversed, citing critical errors by his original trial attorneys.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A civil rights advocate calls the scheduled executions of four men ‘appalling’ and a return to a ‘biased, arbitrary, and error-prone’ system.

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.

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.

Sharon Fahy, whose daughter was murdered in 1988, asked the court to release Walter Ogrod, the man convicted in her killing.

The ruling is a setback for the state’s so-called junk science statute.

‘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.

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.’

John Hummel was scheduled to be executed on Wednesday. The court, citing the current health crisis, has postponed the execution for 60 days.

‘I think everyone involved— the governor, the attorney general, the DOC commissioner—everyone knew it,’ his lawyer said.

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.

Opposition to it should lay the groundwork for opposition to the system of which it is a part.

Three Supreme Court justices and others said competent counsel could have saved his life.

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.

It’s the first time since 2014 that someone on Georgia’s death row has been granted clemency.

On Thursday, the state of Georgia is set to execute a 58-year-old man for a crime that would not receive the death penalty today. Jimmy Meders was convicted of murder and sentenced to die for the October 1987 killing of a convenience store clerk during a robbery. His lawyers want the state parole board to […]

William Barr says the government owes it to the victims and their families to resume federal executions. In doing so, he’s ignoring important facts about the death penalty—and the actual wishes of victims’ families.

Racial disparities in incarceration rates are dropping but still remain high. Racial disparities in sentence lengths are growing.

In these last two months of 2019, one man has been executed and two others are facing execution despite claims that they can show they don’t belong on death row.

Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama have all authorized the practice in capital punishment. So what happens now?

Attorney General William Barr has ordered the resumption of executions by the federal government. Five executions were scheduled for December and January before a federal appeal court granted a stay in the case of Lezmond Mitchell.

Civil rights groups demand change as other states move away from the practice of isolating people sentenced to death.