The New Hampshire legislature this spring passed S. 593, a bill to abolish the state’s death penalty, and, effective at the start of next year, replace it with mandatory life imprisonment without parole. On June 21, Gov. Christopher Sununu (R) vetoed the measure. Sununu’s veto message defended his state’s restraint with the death penalty: only
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and Director of Corrections Joe Allbaugh on March 14 jointly announced the state plans to adopt an execution method never before used in the United States: asphyxiation by nitrogen gas. In 1977, Oklahoma’s medical examiner devised a multi-drug lethal injection protocol, as an alternative to electrocution or hanging. The state
President Trump has sent several recent signals supporting making drug dealing punishable by death. The Washington Post reported on March 9 that both the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Domestic Policy Council are looking at legislative proposals to let prosecutors seek the death penalty in federal drug-dealing cases. According to the Post article, the
The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the conviction and death sentence of a man accused of the capital murder of a two-year-old child. The reversal resulted from several errors made at trial, as well as the taint of prosecutorial misconduct. The November 9, 2017 opinion reversed the conviction of Justin Barrett Blakeney for the murder of
The indigent defense crisis in Louisiana continues, but it is now taking a new and more ominous direction. To fund local public defenders, the state has taken $3 million from capital defenders, leaving at least 11 Louisiana defendants who are facing the death penalty without a lawyer. New Orleans Chief Defender Derwyn Bunton’s decision to
A little over two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida ruled 8-1 it was unconstitutional for state judges to overrule jury sentencing recommendations in death penalty cases. The high court ruled a criminal defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury was violated if the jury was not permitted to
The year-end report for 2017, recently released by the Death Penalty Information Center, shows that the 23 executions carried out in 2017 remain near a record-low level. During the last 25 years, only the 20 executions carried out in 2016 were lower. Similarly, the figure of 39 death-penalty sentences expected to be handed down by
The Death Penalty Information Center has released a report highlighting significant changes in the number of executions in the United States in 2016. According to the report, there were 20 executions in the U.S. during calendar year 2016 – the lowest number in 25 years. Additionally, juries imposed fewer death sentences than in any year
The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has ruled against two Pennsylvania prisoners who were held in solitary confinement on death row for years after their death sentences were vacated. In the course of its opinion, however, the appellate court made it clear that in the future, the state may not subject prisoners to
The state of Georgia, which carried out the highest number of executions in the nation last year, putting nine convicted criminals to death, recorded its first for this year May 17 by administering a three-drug lethal injection protocol to J.W. Ledford Jr., a criminal who spent years appealing his convictions at various levels, and whose
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