The unanimous court found the judge’s disparaging remarks toward a defense lawyer and hostile questioning of defense witnesses may have biased jurors during the penalty phase of a murder trial.
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The Fifth Circuit denied death row inmate Rodney Reed’s request for post-conviction DNA testing, finding his claim is time-barred because he first became aware that his right to access certain physical evidence that he wished to test was being violated when the court denied his Chapter 64 motion in 2014.
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The Obama appointee urged lower courts to consider alternatives to searches that she called degrading and inhumane, while also dissenting over a man’s shackling in a trial that sent him to death row.
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An appeals court in Texas vacated the sentence of the state’s longest-serving death row inmate, Raymond Riles. The jury that convicted Riles for shooting a man to death during a robbery did not receive a “mitigation-focused” instruction but should have because of the mental health evidence presented at trial, including witness testimony that he was often psychotic and had schizophrenia.
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Reversing the Sixth Circuit, the justices ruled evidence in the case overwhelmingly supports the trial court’s conviction and sentence.
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Virginia’s history as the nation’s top executioner comes to an end with a stroke of Democratic Governor Ralph Northam’s pen.
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An Oklahoma appeals court agreed with a death-row inmate that the state lacks jurisdiction to prosecute him because the killings occurred on Chickasaw Nation territory that was never dissolved by Congress and victims were tribe members.
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Civil rights and community organizations say local prosecutors lack authority under state law to intervene in litigation challenging California’s lethal injection protocols.
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An imam filed a federal lawsuit against Alabama on Thursday for barring him from accompanying a Muslim death row inmate during his 2019 execution.
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A California voter who’s proudly voted to uphold and enforce the death penalty in the Golden State sued Governor Gavin Newsom and corrections secretary Kathleen Allison on Wednesday, complaining Newsom unilaterally ended executions and Allison dismantled the state’s only death chamber.
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The last federal inmate facing execution before President Donald Trump leaves office was sentenced to death for the killings of three women in a Maryland wildlife refuge, a crime that led to a life sentence for the man who fired the fatal shots.
Read moreThe U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the executions of Cory Johnson and Dustin Higgs can proceed. The federal executions are the last two scheduled to occur under the Trump administration.
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A Kansas woman was executed Wednesday for strangling an expectant mother in Missouri and cutting the baby from her womb, the first time in nearly seven decades that the U.S. government has put to death a female inmate.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Justice Department to carry out the first execution of a female death-row inmate in almost seven decades.
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The former chairman of one of China’s largest state-controlled asset management firms was sentenced to death Tuesday for soliciting $260 million in bribes, corruption, and also bigamy.
Read moreA federal court in Washington vacated an order that had delayed the execution of Lisa Montgomery, who strangled a pregnant woman to death and cut out the eight-month-old fetus. Montgomery’s lawyers say she suffers from brain damage and multiple mental illnesses. The decision reinstates the execution scheduled for Jan. 12.
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A Texas man who spent 10 years on death row for a crime he did not commit is entitled to compensation, the state’s highest court ruled Friday, despite state officials’ repeated refusal to pay him.
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Chiding the Ninth Circuit, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a death sentence for a man who killed his gambling buddy over some casino losses.
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As Donald Trump’s presidency winds down, his administration is ratcheting up the pace of federal executions despite a surge of coronavirus cases in prisons, announcing plans for five starting Thursday and concluding just days before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Read moreA federal judge declined to halt the Dec. 10 execution of Brandon Bernard, who was convicted of murder in 2000 alongside his co-conspirator in a carjacking that left two youth ministers dead. Bernard was present at the murder scene but did not plan the crime or shoot the victims. However, he has exhausted all avenues to appeal his sentence and the public has a vested interest in carrying out a valid sentence.
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