Death Penalty News

As Christa Pike returns to death row after surviving Tennessee’s attempt to execute her, several questions remain about her case and what comes next.  Pike, 50, was discharged from hospital and moved back to the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center, the women’s prison where she was housed for 30 years, her attorneys said on Saturday.  She was hospitalized after surviving 2 doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital as Tennessee attempted to execute her on September 30. Pike was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, her classmate at a Job Corps training program in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pike was 18 at the time. 

Florida is scheduled to execute James Robertson at noon on Tuesday, October 13, at Florida State Prison. His execution remains scheduled despite the withdrawal of William Lee Thompson’s death warrant, which had called for a 2nd execution that evening. If completed, this will be Florida’s 17th execution of 2026. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) and partners will be holding a series of vigils and demonstrations across the state. 

A coalition of former judges and prosecutors is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Texas death penalty case that raises fundamental questions about the constitutional right to effective legal representation, judicial responsibility, and whether a conviction can stand when the accused was deprived of meaningful assistance from counsel during critical portions of trial.  In an amicus brief filed Oct. 2, the coalition argues that allowing such a conviction to stand threatens the integrity of the adversarial process and could weaken constitutional protections for defendants facing the most severe punishment available under the law.

Filings obtained by The Dallas Morning News cite Melissa Lucio’s recent case proceedings as a consequence of moving forward without an evidentiary hearing.  Nearly a year after Robert Roberson’s last stay of execution, his attorneys are using another death row inmate’s case as grounds to again press a Texas judge for an evidentiary hearing. In court documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News, Roberson’s lead attorney Gretchen Sween asked Smith County District Judge Austin Reeves Jackson to schedule a date “as soon as possible.” Sween cited the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decision late last month in the case of Melissa Lucio, arguing it makes the need for live testimony and further fact-finding especially urgent. 

What happened in Tennessee's execution chamber is one of the most common failures in medicine Christa Pike is awake. A week after Tennessee strapped her to a gurney and gave her two doses of pentobarbital , she is off the ventilator and speaking from a hospital bed, still shackled to it. Her lawyers call her recovery " medically unprecedented. " Legal scholars say she is the first person in American history to survive a lethal injection after the drug was actually given. I understand the impulse to make such claims. I consulted for Pike's legal team, but I have also spent three decades in operating rooms and intensive care units (ICUs), and I want to resist the word "unprecedented" and the word "miracle" that hovers just behind it.

The US is one of the few Western nations that still permits the death penalty, carried out regularly in 27 states. And in a country where regional political culture strongly favours retributive justice, it is no wonder capital punishment remains an enduring part of the American legal system. But following Christa Pike's botched lethal injection last week, fresh questions are being raised over whether executing convicted murderers and rapists outweighs the risks of an innocent person being put to death, or of an execution going so badly that a prisoner is left to die in agony, or even survives the attempt.

She's now back in custody at the Deborah K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center Christa Pike is out of the hospital and receiving medical care in prison following a failed execution attempt. Her legal team, Stephen Ferrell and Luke Ihnen from Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, and Randy Spivey and Kelly Gleason from the TN Office of the Post Conviction Defender, issued this statement on Oct. 10: "Christa Pike was discharged from a local hospital and is now at Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center where she has been housed for more than 30 years. She is grateful to the first responders and her medical team for their care in these extraordinary circumstances. She is continuing to receive medical care at the prison, and we will continue to track her recovery."

Any effort to challenge the Trump administration’s plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan might rest solely with the man sentenced to death for killing 13 people at the Texas military base in 2009, experts say. Broadcasting the event worldwide isn’t mentioned in the Army rules governing how rare military executions are carried out. But that doesn’t mean there is a viable legal path to oppose it by anyone besides Hasan. And he hasn’t signaled whether he will even try to stop anything related to his Dec. 3 death sentence.

Hengaw – Friday, October 9, 2026 | Iranian courts have sentenced at least 106 people arrested during the January 2026 protests to death, 35 of whom have already been executed. Another 63 remain at serious and imminent risk of execution, while the death sentences of eight others have been overturned, according to findings documented and verified by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. Hengaw is releasing these findings in a special report marking World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10. Drawing on evidence collected and verified by its Statistics and Documentation Center through October 9, 2026, the report details the death sentences imposed on protest detainees, the executions carried out, and the judicial proceedings and current status of their cases.

Death row leaves convicts' lives in limbo, agonizing over an existence neither ended nor lived Every weekday before 1997, death row inmates in Korea braced themselves between 6 and 9 a.m.—the hours when executions could happen. If 9 a.m. passed uneventfully, they felt relief. Then they went to sleep wondering if the next morning would be their last. No one has been executed since Dec. 30, 1997, but 56 people remain on death row—52 in Ministry of Justice correctional facilities and four in military prisons. Kim Dae-keun, a research fellow at the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice, interviewed 42 of them.

Najmeh Amini, a 23-year-old woman detained in Mashhad Central Prison, was sentenced to death on the charge of blasphemy (insulting the prophet) over her social media post. The trial court rejected her statutory defenses of a slip of the tongue and intoxication-induced lack of intent, though the capital sentence remains subject to appellate review and has not yet been upheld by the Supreme Court.  Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights, stated: “Sentencing a 23-year-old woman to death for what she expressed on social media is an extremely alarming development. Although blasphemy carries the death penalty under Iranian law and two men were executed on such charges in 2023, this case risks expanding the use of the death penalty against peaceful online expression. The fact that the sentence has been imposed on a young woman adds another serious dimension. Without a strong international response now, we risk seeing a broader use and implementation of death sentences ...

Under the amended Crimes and Penalties Law, the minimum prison term has risen from seven to 15 years, and the maximum from 15 to 20 years, a legal expert said  Those convicted of murder will face imprisonment of 15 to 20 years in cases where the victim’s heirs waive their right to qisas (retribution), under amendments to the UAE’s Crimes and Penalties Law announced on Thursday, October 8.

The January 2026 nationwide protests resulted in killings, arrests, and severe judicial sentences for a segment of Iran’s athletic community. Several athletes from football, wrestling, martial arts, and mountaineering who joined the demonstrations were killed by Islamic Republic security forces, while a large number were detained. Now, nearly nine months after the protests, several detained athletes continue to face the threat of execution.

At least five prisoners, including a woman and two Lor men, have been executed in recent weeks at prisons in Shiraz, Dezful, Karaj and Sari. All five had been sentenced to death on murder charges. According to information obtained by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Mehdi Alizadeh, a resident of Shiraz, was executed at Adelabad Prison in the city at dawn on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, after being convicted of murder. On the same day, Ahmad Nikdel, a 44-year-old Lor man, father of three and laborer, was executed at Dezful Prison. He had been sentenced to death under Iran’s qisas (retributive justice) laws in connection with a killing that occurred during a workplace dispute.

One of Florida’s longest-serving death row inmates has been spared from execution amid reports he is suffering from dementia—50 years after he was convicted of a torture murder.  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew William Thompson’s death warrant on Thursday—just five days before the 74-year-old killer’s scheduled execution for what cops at the time called Miami-Dade’s “meanest murder". DeSantis didn’t explain why he withdrew Thompson’s death warrant in a letter he sent to Florida State Prison Warden Randall Polk, which has been viewed by The Post. He had only signed the death warrant on Sept. 11.

The public will be able to watch the execution of a former US Army major by firing squad, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said. A Defense Department official told the BBC the execution of Nidal Hasan, who shot dead 13 unarmed US soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009, would be livestreamed. It is believed it would be the first public execution in the US in almost a century. The decision to livestream it is "unprecedented in the modern era" and "on uncertain legal terrain", said John Mills, a lawyer who works with inmates sentenced to death.

Recovery marks a dramatic turnaround for Pike, who remains in hospital after a botched execution in Tennessee Christa Pike is “up and walking” in hospital, her lawyer said, just more than a week after she survived two lethal injections during a botched execution in Tennessee. The recovery marks a dramatic turnaround after Pike was declared brain dead on Monday, before waking up and beginning to speak on Tuesday. Her ordeal has shocked many in the US and overseas and galvanized critics of the death penalty. Stephen Ferrell, a lawyer on Pike’s legal team, told the BBC that she was able to walk but remained mentally foggy. “What’s been described to me is that physically there’s quite a bit going on, that her arms are very injured and she’s not able to use them very much,” Ferrell said.

After Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike survived an execution attempt, it's unclear whether the state will try again. After Christa Pike survived Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute her, the unsettled question of whether the state will try again could push Tennessee into uncharted legal territory, experts say. Pike, 50, suffered burns and blisters to her arms, and her prognosis remains uncertain after executioners tried to give her two lethal doses of pentobarbital, her legal team said Wednesday. She was sentenced to death for the 1995 beating and stabbing death of classmate Colleen Slemmer.

Texas carries out 1st US execution since Christa Pike's botched lethal injection  A death row inmate was executed by lethal injection on Wednesday evening in Texas, the 1st execution in the US since the failed attempt to put Christa Pike to death last week.  Lawyers for 46-year-old Jamaal Howard had asked a judge to pause the execution in light of Pike's botched injections last week, according to the BBC's US partner, CBS News.  But courts denied their requests, and he received a fatal dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Huntsville. He was pronounced dead at 20:03 local time. 

Decades after blaming Glossip for his own actions, Justin Sneed is less credible than ever—and prosecutors know it. When the elevator doors opened, the reporters waiting in the hallway immediately crowded around the gaunt, orange-clad man who emerged, escorted by his public defender and a sheriff’s deputy. The three men made their way toward the seventh-floor courtroom of Oklahoma County District Court Judge Natalie Mai as reporters shouted questions. “Why did you kill Barry Van Treese?” one asked.