The FBI has been reviewing thousands of criminal convictions in order to determine whether they may have been secured using faulty science. Now, 27 death penalty convictions are reportedly being questioned.
A judge granted Warren Hill, a mentally retarded death row inmate in Georgia, a stay of execution Monday afternoon in order to examine a new state law about lethal-injection drugs. The judge issued the stay just four hours before Hill was to be executed.
Warren Hill, a mentally retarded death row inmate in Georgia, will be executed on July 15 unless the courts step in to save him again.
When your state runs out of the drugs necessary for lethal injections, it seems you have a few options. You can hold off on executing prisoners until a court of law can decide what is humane and what is cruel and unusual, or, if you're Chris Koster, you can try to go retro to exert leverage over said court.
Texas just executed its 500th person since 1982, when the state resumed using the death penalty.
Tonight, the state of Texas is scheduled to carry out its 500th execution since the death penalty was legalized there in 1982.
Support for the death penalty among Americans is hovering around a 40-year low. Nevertheless, enthusiastic legislators from Bumfuck all the way to Hickville are taking it upon themselves to help their states execute death row inmates with greater dispatch.
Tomorrow Saudi Arabia will behead seven men for crimes they committed as juveniles.
Earlier this year, we published several letters from American death row inmates who were scheduled for execution in 2012. Two of those letters were from Brett Hartmann, Ohio inmate 357-869. Yesterday, he was executed by lethal injection.
The U.S. of A, the greatest country on earth, has legally executed 27 people this year, and more than 1,300 since we resurrected the death penalty back in 1976. Mr. Presidential Candidates, what will YOUR administration do to ensure that the USA is not eclipsed by nations like Iraq and Gambia, who are trying to Even Greater Than Us, in a "killing their own citizens" sense?
The state of Texas just killed a man with an IQ of 61.
A massive report published today in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review claims that Carlos DeLuna was wrongly convicted of murdering Wanda Lopez in 1983 despite a mountain of evidence suggesting that another man with similar features and the same first name was the real killer.
After 30 years of "Free Mumia" signs, t-shirts and bumper stickers being omnipresent at every single even vaguely left-leaning rally, the state of Pennsylvania has announced that it will no longer seek the death penalty against the journalist and former Black Panther, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.
Calling the death penalty "as practiced... unfair and unjust," Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced today that he won't allow any executions his term in office, and will soon ask the legislature to consider reforms—if not abolishment.
On Wednesday, Texas is scheduled to execute Hank Skinner for the murders of three people. For years, his lawyers have sought DNA testing of unanalyzed evidence, the results of which could prove his innocence—but the courts have rejected their requests every time. The "ultimate justice" machine stops for no one!
It's just not good enough to kill them, in Texas. Because following last night's execution of Lawrence Brewer, a white supremacist who killed a black man by dragging his body from the back of his pick-up truck and eventually severed his head, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has decided to stop granting special "last meals" to those being executed. Brewer's meal, see, was over-the-top!
Troy Davis, the death row inmate whose guilt in the 1989 murder of Officer Mark Allen MacPhail has been seriously called into doubt, was executed by lethal injection at 11:08 p.m. ET after the Supreme Court refused to stay his execution. With his last words, he reportedly maintained his innocence to the McPhail family.
Troy Davis has become a cause celebre for death penalty opponents and fans of justice in general—primarily because there's substantial doubt about whether he's actually guilty of the crime he's sentenced to die for.
While convicted double murderer Duane Buck's guilt is not in question, his death penalty sentence is. So in a last-minute measure — Buck had already eaten his last meal — his execution was stayed, because during his sentencing hearing the prosecution had a psychologist testify that black people are more likely to commit crimes.
Probable presidential candidate Rick Perry, like other Texas governors, has a history of executing tons of people. The most famous case is that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed under Perry for burning down his home with his three children inside, even though there's significant evidence that he didn't do it. How will Perry ever get past this in a presidential primary? Trick question! He doesn't have to "get past" anything, because Republican primary voters like him for doing this.
