The Random Horror of the Death Penalty

The Supreme Court has not banned capital punishment, as it should, but it has long held that the death penalty is unconstitutional if randomly imposed on a handful of people. An important new study based on capital cases in Connecticut provides powerful evidence that death sentences are haphazardly meted out, with virtually no connection to the heinousness of the crime.

A number of studies in the last three decades have shown that black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death if their victim is white rather than black. But defenders of capital punishment often respond to those studies by arguing that the “worst of the worst” are sentenced to death because their crimes are the most egregious.

The Connecticut study, conducted by John Donohue, a Stanford law professor, completely dispels this erroneous reasoning. It analyzed all murder cases in Connecticut over a 34-year period and found that inmates on death row are indistinguishable from equally violent offenders who escape that penalty. It shows that the process in Connecticut — similar to those in other death-penalty states — is utterly arbitrary and discriminatory.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Op-ed by Lincoln Caplan, The New York Times, January 7, 2012

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Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

Oklahoma executes Wendell Grissom

Grissom used some of his last words on Earth to apologize to everyone he hurt and said that he prays they can find forgiveness for their own sake. As for his execution, he said it was a mercy. Oklahoma executed Wendell Arden Grissom on Thursday for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews in front of her best friend’s two young daughters in 2005. Grissom, 56, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. local time, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by the state in 2025 and the ninth in the United States this year.

Florida executes Edward James

Edward James received 3-drug lethal injection under death warrant signed in February by governor Ron DeSantis A Florida man who killed an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother on a night in which he drank heavily and used drugs was executed on Thursday. Edward James, 63, was pronounced dead at 8.15pm after receiving a 3-drug injection at Florida state prison outside Starke under a death warrant signed in February by Governor Ron DeSantis. The execution was the 2nd this year in Florida, which is planning a 3rd in April.

Louisiana executes Jessie Hoffman Jr.

Louisiana used nitrogen gas Tuesday evening to execute a man convicted of murdering a woman in 1996, the 1st time the state has used the method, a lawyer for the condemned man said. Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46, was put to death at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, defense lawyer Cecelia Kappel said in a statement. He was the 1st person executed in the state in 15 years, and his death marked the 5th use of the nitrogen gas method in the US, with all the rest in Alabama. Hoffman was convicted of the murder of Mary "Molly" Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive. At the time of the crime, Hoffman was 18.

Supreme Court rejects appeal from Texas death row inmate

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from a Texas death row inmate whose bid for a new trial drew the support of the prosecutor’s office that originally put him on death row. The justices left in place a Texas appeals court ruling that upheld the murder conviction and death sentence for Areli Escobar, even though Escobar’s case is similar to that of an Oklahoma man, Richard Glossip, whose murder conviction the high court recently overturned.

South Carolina | Spiritual adviser of condemned inmate: 'We're more than the worst thing we've done'

(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Texas Death Row chef who cook for hundreds of inmates explained why he refused to serve one last meal

Brian Price would earn the title after 11 years cooking for the condemned In the unlikely scenario that you ever find yourself on Death Row, approaching your final days as a condemned man, what would you request for your final meal? Would you push the boat out and request a full steal dinner or play it safe and opt for a classic dish such as pizza or a burger? For most of us it's something that we'll never have to think about, but for one man who spent over a decade working as a 'Death Row chef' encountering prisoner's final requests wasn't anything out of the ordinary.

South Carolina plans to carry out a firing squad execution. Is it safe for witnesses?

South Carolina plans to execute a man by firing squad on March 7, the first such execution in the state and the first in the nation in 15 years. But firearms experts are questioning whether South Carolina's indoor execution setup is safe for the workers who will shoot the prisoner and the people who will watch. Photos released by the South Carolina Department of Corrections show that the state intends to strap the prisoner, Brad Sigmon, to a metal seat in the same small, indoor brick death chamber where South Carolina has executed more than 40 other prisoners by electric chair and lethal injection since 1985.

The doctor defending Louisiana’s controversial execution method

Dr. Joseph Antognini travels across the nation, being paid over $500 an hour by government officials who rely on him to vouch for their execution protocols. This [article] is part of “ Operating Capital ,” an ongoing Lens discussion about Louisiana’s resumption of executions. Earlier this month, Dr. Joseph Antognini, a California-based retired anesthesiologist, walked into the execution chamber at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He tried on the air-tight mask that prison staff plan to use to execute Death Row prisoner Jessie Hoffman , using nitrogen hypoxia, a method that Louisiana executioners have never before used.

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