USA | Analysis Shows Supreme Court’s Changing View of Death Penalty Cases

A recent analysis by Bloomberg Law concluded that death-sentenced prisoners have fewer avenues to relief at the Supreme Court than ever before. Bloomberg identified 270 emergency requests to stay executions since 2013 and found that the Court agreed to block an execution just 11 times.

Since 2020, when the Court shifted to a 6-3 conservative majority following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court has granted just two stays of execution. One, for John Henry Ramirez, challenged not the execution itself but the protocols for religious advisors in the death chamber. The Court granted Mr. Ramirez’s requests, and he was executed in 2022.

The other stay was granted to Richard Glossip of Oklahoma this past May pending the outcome of his current appeal, in which the State supports a new trial. The Court considered Mr. Glossip’s petition at its “long conference” on September 26 but has yet to announce whether it will take the case.

Bloomberg Law found that the Court also intervened to set executions in motion when a lower court had granted a stay. In the past ten years, the Court has granted 18 of 21 emergency requests to vacate a stay imposed by a lower court—making the Court significantly more likely to order an execution to proceed than to block one from occurring. Half of those orders to vacate a stay have been decided since 2020. Kelley Henry, attorney for federal death row prisoner Lisa Montgomery, saw multiple stays granted by lower courts “picked off one by one” in the 48 hours before Ms. Montgomery’s scheduled execution on January 13, 2021. Ms. Montgomery was executed just one week before President Joe Biden took office, one of the last of a string of federal executions conducted during the Trump administration after a 17-year hiatus. The new Biden administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions days later. “You never know until you get the final call from the capital case staff attorney at the Supreme Court what’s going to happen,” Ms. Henry said.

The justices’ opinions reveal a division at the high court on how to treat emergency stays, with the conservative majority viewing such stay applications with suspicion. “Last-minute stays should be the extreme exception, not the norm,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in 2019. “Courts should police carefully against attempts to use such challenges as tools to interpose unjustified delay.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor has contended that such efforts to narrow the avenues of relief for death-sentenced prisoners result in “illogical” rulings that favor procedure over meritorious claims. Justice Sotomayor dissented from the 6-3 denial of a stay for Johnny Johnson in August, writing that the Court “paves the way to execute a man with documented mental illness before any court meaningfully investigates his competency to be executed.”

On October 2, the same day the Court denied review to two high-profile death-sentenced men with innocence claims, the Court denied two stay applications for Michael Zack of Florida. Attorneys for Mr. Zack had argued that he was intellectually disabled due to his diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, making his execution unconstitutional under Atkins v. Virginia (2002). Mr. Zack is scheduled to be executed at 6:00 p.m. on October 3. [Michael Zack was executed on October 3, 2023 — DPN]

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Staff, October 3, 2023

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Two Executions In Six Hours: Florida Set For Historical Double Execution Tuesday

Florida is preparing to execute two death row inmates on Tuesday, July 28, in an action that would mark the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12 p.m., followed six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone at 6 p.m. If carried out, these will mark the 39th and 40th executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the 11th and 12th in the state since the beginning of 2026. In response, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) has launched petition and letter-writing efforts asking DeSantis to halt both procedures. The group has organized two public vigils outside Florida State Prison in Raiford, set for 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., contingent on whether stays are issued.

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

Florida executes James Duckett

Double execution: 1st of 2 inmates is put to death in Florida Florida has executed James Duckett, a 68-year-old former cop convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987. The state is set to execute an 80-year-old man 6 hours later for a 1986 murder. Florida carried out the 1st double execution in more than 60 years, executing former police officer James Duckett and later scheduling the execution of 80‑year‑old Dominick Occhicone, amid Governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive push to increase death penalties in the state. Florida has put to death the 1st of 2 inmates in the state's 1st double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Florida | 49 years on death row, killer of Bonita Springs teen learns death date

A Fort Myers man on death row for nearly five decades learned his execution date as Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his order Thursday, July 30. Harold Gene Lucas, then 24, shot and killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Anthia Jill Piper in Bonita Springs on August 14, 1976. Lucas was 24 when he was charged in Piper's shooting death at her parents' home on Aug. 14, 1976. The execution is set for Sept. 1 in a state that has accelerated its pace under DeSantis the past two years, with a record of 19 executions in 2025. Piper was shot seven times by Lucas, who claimed to be intoxicated.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

Iran erects iron gallows in Isfahan protest square

An iron gallows has been erected in an Isfahan square where protests erupted in January. Families of several of the 10 remaining prisoners sentenced to death have been summoned for farewell visits. An iron gallows erected in Ali-Khani Square in the central Iranian city of Isfahan has raised fears that the regime is preparing to publicly execute protesters arrested during nationwide demonstrations in January. Sources who spoke with Iran International said large numbers of security forces had been deployed in the area, while the families of several prisoners sentenced to death had been summoned to the prison for farewell visits.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

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