Tennessee tests its electric chair in preparation for next week’s execution
October 25, 2018
The Tennessean has a story today on how the state will test the electric chair it will use to kill Edmund Zagorski next Thursday. The
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Support for death penalty lowest in decades
October 22, 2018
The majority of Americans no longer believe the death penalty is applied fairly. For the first time since Gallup polled on this issue in 2000,
A “comic” look at lethal injection
October 12, 2018
There is nothing new about comics depicting tragedy. Comics and graphic novels have been covering serious topics for years. Art Spiegelman’s classic graphic novel, Maus,
World Day Against the Death Penalty 2018
October 12, 2018
Update: On October 10, 2018, the Malaysian government announced that the country will abolish the death penalty for all crimes. Around 1,200 people are on
“Women on Death Row: Invisible Subjects of Gender Discrimination”
October 12, 2018
California has the largest female death row in the U.S., with 23 condemned women imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Four women
Kavanaugh, SCOTUS, and criminal justice
October 12, 2018
In the words of Bob Dylan, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing
SCOTUS considers dementia and the death penalty
October 12, 2018
“The eighth amendment isn’t just a window. It’s a mirror. And what the Court has said is that our norms, our values are implicated when
Tennessee prisoner chooses electric chair over lethal injection
October 12, 2018
(This is a developing story. We will continue to update it as events unfold.) Yesterday, just a few hours before Edmund Zagorski was scheduled to be executed,
Julius Jones’ racial bias petition denied
October 12, 2018
Although court documents state that a member of the Oklahoma jury that sentenced Julius Jones to death for the July 1999 fatal shooting of 45-year-old Paul Howell
While we’re on the subject . . . .
October 12, 2018
In his column, “Justice Delayed, With a Life on the Line,” in last Sunday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof again writes about the case of Kevin
In brief: October 2018
October 12, 2018
In North Carolina, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation released a report, “Unequal Justice: How Obsolete Laws and Unfair Trials Created North Carolina’s Outsized Death
Washington supreme court strikes down death penalty law
October 12, 2018
Yesterday, the Washington supreme court acknowledged that the state’s death penalty scheme is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner and struck it down. The
“The Penalty” is now on Amazon Prime Video
August 2, 2019
The acclaimed documentary is now on Amazon’s video streaming platform.
“When we focus on revenge instead of healing, we never heal”
July 31, 2019
In 1986, my 70-year-old mother was asleep in her own bed when a teenaged neighbor broke into her home, raped her, and then beat her
Federal government to resume executions after 16-year hiatus
July 26, 2019
The Department of Justice announced today that it has scheduled five executions in December and January; the first federal executions since 2003. “The federal death
The “paradigm shift” in California’s death penalty
July 12, 2019
Death penalty lawyer and DPF board member Robert M. Sanger believes that the moratorium Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in March created “a paradigm shift in
ACLU’s report on Los Angeles DA Jackie Lacey’s shameful death penalty record
July 11, 2019
“In Los Angeles County, which is known as a bastion of progressivism, we have a system that is churning out more death sentences than any
Mississippi DA says Flowers will be tried again
July 11, 2019
Three weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 2010 conviction of Curtis Flowers, who has been tried six times for a 1996 quadruple murder
1,500 executions; 166 exonerations
July 11, 2019
Two milestones were reached in June, starkly illustrating how broken the death penalty in the United States is. In North Carolina, prosecutors formally dismissed all
In brief: July 2019
July 11, 2019
New Mexico closed its death row late last month. The last two condemned prisoners, Timothy Allen and Robert Fry, had their sentences vacated by the
While we’re on the subject . . .
July 11, 2019
In his chapter, “Capital Punishment,” in the American Bar Association’s The State of Criminal Justice 2019, Ronald J. Tabak reviews significant developments through the past
