Death Penalty News

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.

Over the course of two hours, witnesses watched and listened as Christa Pike cried, whimpered and snored through Tennessee’s attempt to execute her. By the end of it, executioners had given her two doses of the state’s lethal injection drugs. Her arms were swollen and blistered, and one had turned purple, her attorneys said. And she was still alive, marking what legal experts say is the first time a prisoner in the U.S. has survived one dose—let alone two—of lethal injection drugs.

Republican leaders in Tennessee’s legislature say they will investigate the reliability of lethal injection as an execution method after the state failed to execute two death row inmates in the span of five months. Gov. Bill Lee stopped the May execution of Tony Carruthers after a physician unsuccessfully attempted to insert intravenous lines to begin the lethal injection process for over an hour. Death row inmate Christa Pike survived two failed rounds of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol on Sept. 30 before the execution was halted. Pike, who was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, is receiving medical care in a Nashville hospital. 

Convicted murderer Christa Pike has woken up and begun speaking from her hospital bed almost a week after authorities in the US state of Tennessee botched her execution, her lawyers said. Pike, 50, was sent to hospital after surviving two attempts to execute her via lethal injection for the 1995 murder of a 19-year-old she met at a summer camp for troubled teens. An independent review of what went wrong in the Nashville execution chamber on 30 September has been ordered by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee. He has also halted executions in the state for the rest of the year.

WASHINGTON (DPN) — Nearly 17 years after an Army psychiatrist opened fire on unarmed soldiers preparing to deploy, the Pentagon has set a date to put him to death. Former Maj. Nidal Hasan is scheduled to be executed by firing squad at 1 p.m. Central Time on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, Texas—the same post where, on Nov. 5, 2009, he killed 13 people and wounded 32 others. If the sentence is carried out, it would be the first U.S. military execution since 1961 and the Army’s first by firing squad since World War II.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Christa Pike, a Tennessee inmate who survived Tennessee's attempt to execute her, is awake and speaking as she receives treatment at a hospital, her attorneys said Tuesday. "Against all odds, Christa Pike is conscious, speaking, and continues to receive critical medical care. Despite the severe damage she endured to her arms, she is still handcuffed and shackled to the bed. Her recovery is medically unprecedented. Her prognosis remains unclear but, at a minimum, we expect a long recovery," attorneys for Pike said in a statement.

With executions suspended in Korea for nearly 30 years, 52 death row inmates are currently being held in domestic correctional facilities, the justice ministry said Tuesday. The death row prisoners have an average age of 58.7, while 17, or 32.7 percent, are aged 60 or older, the ministry said, four days ahead of World Day Against the Death Penalty, observed annually on Oct. 10. Those in their 50s make up the largest group, with 29 inmates, it added. The death-sentenced prisoners include notorious serial killers Yoo Young-chul and Kang Ho-sun, who are currently imprisoned at the Seoul Detention Center after being convicted of killing 20 and 10 people, respectively.

A Kentucky death row prisoner died in custody 29 years to the day after he was sentenced to death for a fatal stabbing and sexual assault in Floyd County. Donald Johnson, 59, died Oct. 1, inside the state’s sole maximum security prison, Kentucky State Penitentiary, in Eddyville. The Department of Corrections confirmed Johnson’s death Monday night and said the cause of death “does not appear to involve any criminal activity.”  “As with any death of an inmate while in prison, law enforcement has been notified,” department spokesperson Morgan Hall said in an emailed statement. 

President Donald Trump has approved the execution of the Fort Hood shooter by firing squad—the first execution of this kind in the US since the Second World War. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, killed 13 unarmed US soldiers and injured more than 30 others at Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas, in 2009. He walked into a medical building where the soldiers were getting checkups, shouted “Allahu akbar"—Arabic for “God is great!”—and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun.

Christa Pike, the woman who survived two execution attempts in Tennessee earlier this week, remains hospitalized in critical condition, where presumably medical staff is at work trying to keep her alive.  If she wakes from the coma she had entered, Tennessee officials want to start anew to inject lethal drugs into her seemingly too-small veins to kill her and carry out the state death warrant. Pike also is being treated for “significant injuries to both arms” sustained when two lethal injections of pentobarbital failed to kill her. If she dies, there will be no need to try again.  As we know by now, Tennessee tried to put Pike to death Wednesday night by lethal injection for a murder she committed when she was 18. She would have been the first woman executed in the state in 200 years. 

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his second death warrant within a week, putting the state in position to exceed its modern-era record for executions in a single year set in 2025. DeSantis on Monday signed a warrant for Jesse Guardado, 64, to be executed Nov. 5 at Florida State Prison for the murder of a Walton County woman in 2004. With three other executions planned over the next two weeks, Guardado would become the 20th execution conducted by the state this year. The 19 executions carried out by the state in 2025 were the most for a single year in Florida since capital punishment was revived after a four-year hiatus in 1976 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Hamam al-Hammami, 29, formally charged with attempted terrorist act after attacking captain with cockpit axe. UAE prosecutors confirm he planned to crash jet in Israel United Arab Emirates prosecutors have formally charged the Flydubai co-pilot who attacked his captain mid-flight with attempted terrorism, a classification that could carry the death penalty under Emirati law. The move signals the UAE's determination to treat the incident as a planned terror attack rather than a security breach.

Hengaw – Monday, October 5, 2026 | Iranian authorities have executed Alireza Sepahi and Alireza Raisi, two protesters arrested during the widespread January 2026 protests and defendants in the case known as the “Isfahan Alikhani Square” case. Reports received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights show that Sepahi and Raisi were executed at Isfahan Central Prison on the morning of October 5, 2026. Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s official news agency, confirmed the executions. Sepahi, 25, was arrested during the January protests after being wounded by four gunshots. His mother was also sentenced to five years in prison. His cousin, Abolfazl Sepahi, was arrested in the same case, sentenced to death, and publicly executed on July 28, 2026.

Reacting to Wednesday night’s botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee, President Trump was surprised. The New York Post quotes him as saying, “How does that happen? Should be easy to do. It shouldn’t be very difficult.” Easy? Not so. Since their introduction almost fifty years ago, lethal injection executions have proven to be anything but easy. In fact, they have been more frequently botched than any other method of execution used in American history.

Christa Pike has remained unconscious and on a ventilator at a hospital in the four days since her failed execution in Tennessee, and her prognosis might not be known for days more, one of her lawyers said Sunday. Little has been released about Pike’s condition since Wednesday night’s execution attempt. She has since remained hospitalized under guard as doctors try to get the massive dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital out of her system. When asked whether she ever regained consciousness after the execution attempt, Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell, Pike’s lawyer, said on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “Not that I am aware of.”

Iranian authorities have executed five prisoners on charges of “murder” and “drug-related offenses” in prisons across Karaj, Sari, Tabriz, Gorgan, and Malayer amid an alarming rise in executions across the country. According to reports documented by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Rasoul Karimi, 42, was executed at Qezelhesar Prison in Karaj on Wednesday, September 30, 2026. He was married, had one child, and had previously been arrested on “murder” charges.

Senior Emirati source says Mossad and Israeli aviation experts joined the Abu Dhabi probe alongside Saudi, Omani and US intelligence officials, as investigators examine claims he planned to seize the cockpit and strike Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Towers The man suspected of trying to turn a Flydubai passenger jet into a weapon is expected to face the death penalty in the United Arab Emirates once the investigation is completed, according to a senior Emirati source. But before that happens, investigators in Abu Dhabi will have to answer a far more uncomfortable question: How was Hamam al-Hammami allowed anywhere near a cockpit? 

Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada has resigned as head of the state’s prison system following this week’s failed execution of Christa Pike. It was the second time this year that a scheduled execution had gone disastrously wrong at Nashville’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.  Gov. Bill Lee announced the “leadership transition” Saturday morning, thanking Strada for his “willingness to put the interests of Tennesseans first during this difficult moment.” The governor added that he would “pray God’s blessings over him in the days ahead.”

Indiana prison officials plan to proceed with Jeffrey Weisheit’s Nov. 5 execution after a botched lethal injection in Tennessee prompted that state’s governor to halt executions and order an independent review. The Indiana Department of Correction said Thursday that it remains confident in its procedures despite using the same protocol as Tennessee. Agency officials offered no additional details about the training of those administering lethal injections, the role of medical personnel, or safeguards for execution drugs.