US | The ​“Fiction of Agency”: Jeffrey Hutchinson Is the Latest of Many Executed After Attorneys Missed Deadlines to File Federal Appeals

On May 1, Jeffrey Hutchinson, a Gulf War vet­er­an, was exe­cut­ed in Florida for the mur­ders of his girl­friend and her three young chil­dren. As he fought behind ene­my lines in some of the most dan­ger­ous regions on earth, bombs rat­tled and nerve gas cor­rod­ed his brain, caus­ing per­ma­nent dam­age that would con­tribute to the tragedy just a few years lat­er. ​“His mind was a casu­al­ty, just like any limb lost in com­bat,” a group of 129 mil­i­tary vet­er­ans wrote in a let­ter urg­ing Gov. Ron DeSantis to halt the exe­cu­tion. But no fed­er­al court ever con­sid­ered whether Mr. Hutchinson’s life should be spared because of the phys­i­cal and men­tal trau­ma he suf­fered in the mil­i­tary. His fed­er­al appeals were dis­missed not because they did not have mer­it, but because his attor­neys mis­cal­cu­lat­ed a filing deadline.

Mr. Hutchinson is one of at least 57 death-sen­tenced men who lost their chance for fed­er­al review of their claims because their attor­neys did not file their appeals in time.1 He is the 29th to be exe­cut­ed; 17 remain on death row. These men suf­fered the con­se­quences of their lawyers’ fail­ures under the long­stand­ing ​“agency” doc­trine, which holds a client respon­si­ble for his lawyer’s actions because the client has autho­rized the lawyer to act as his agent. However, many argue that this doc­trine should not apply in death penal­ty cas­es. ​“If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to exe­cute a pris­on­er because his lawyer had made a mis­take, the answer would be no,” wrote Adam Liptak, a long­time legal jour­nal­ist for The New York Times. ​“You might even get a look sug­gest­ing that you had asked a pret­ty stupid question.”

The Assumptions of Agency

Critics point out that the ​“agency” doc­trine rests on cer­tain assump­tions: that clients freely choose their lawyers; that those lawyers have the time and exper­tise to pro­vide high-qual­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion; that clients are in reg­u­lar con­tact with their lawyers to mon­i­tor the sta­tus of their case; and that clients have a com­pe­tent under­stand­ing of the legal sys­tem. These assump­tions clash with the real­i­ties of a cap­i­tal case. ​“Now con­sid­er a client who is poor, une­d­u­cat­ed, men­tal­ly trou­bled, scared, or impris­oned — or per­haps all of these things at once,” Mr. Liptak wrote. ​“And then add to this mix a lawyer who is not retained but a vol­un­teer or assigned by the state. Does it still make sense to con­sid­er such a lawyer an authen­tic agent of the client?”

Under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers have one year from the time their death sen­tences become ​“final” to file a habeas appeal in fed­er­al court. They are also enti­tled to pur­sue post-con­vic­tion appeals in state court, and their fed­er­al appeals are ​“tolled” — the clock is stopped — while their state appeals are con­sid­ered. But these cal­cu­la­tions can become com­pli­cat­ed. DPI’s review of the 57 cas­es found sev­er­al instances where judges and attor­neys dis­agreed on the tim­ing of a prisoner’s dead­line. In Richard Hamilton’s case, a Florida judge, pros­e­cu­tors, and his own attor­ney assured him that he still had time to file even though the dead­line had passed months ear­li­er.2

Mr. Hutchinson had a bet­ter under­stand­ing than most pris­on­ers of the com­plex law gov­ern­ing his fed­er­al habeas fil­ing. A week before his dead­line, he told his attor­neys ​“point blank and in no uncer­tain terms to ​‘either file my…motion imme­di­ate­ly or I will dis­charge you and file it myself.’” His attor­neys promised they would do so but instead filed about three weeks lat­er under the false belief that they had more time. The Eleventh Circuit denied Mr. Hutchinson relief in 2012. (In doing so, the judges them­selves cor­rect­ed the dead­line in a foot­note, say­ing that ​“for some rea­son” both par­ties and the low­er court had agreed it was September 30th when it should have been the 29th.)

In a con­cur­rence, Judge Rosemary Barkett laid out a sys­tem­at­ic cri­tique of the agency doc­trine. She wrote that the the­o­ry makes two assump­tions: 1) ​“that the client vol­un­tar­i­ly choos­es his lawyer for com­pe­tence, dili­gence, and loy­al­ty,” and 2) ​“that the client has the abil­i­ty to direct the actions of the lawyer or, at the very least, that con­stant and ade­quate oppor­tu­ni­ties exist for com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the client and his lawyer.” 

However, most death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers ​“must depend on appoint­ed or pro bono vol­un­teer coun­sel who too often lack exper­tise in post-con­vic­tion death penal­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” she wrote. ​“Prisons are often locat­ed in far-flung places that are dif­fi­cult for lawyers to reach and often the lawyers are not even locat­ed with­in the same state as their death row clients,” who ​“have restrict­ed access to phones, the inter­net, and law libraries.” She fur­ther not­ed that ​“the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of spend­ing extend­ed peri­ods in soli­tary confinement…may impair an inmate’s men­tal capa­bil­i­ties to the extent that his active par­tic­i­pa­tion in lit­i­ga­tion becomes impos­si­ble.” And “[f]inally, even if death row inmates were giv­en the abil­i­ty to access their attor­neys with­out these for­mi­da­ble obsta­cles, most death row inmates lack the skills and intel­lect to super­vise, direct or police the activ­i­ties of their lawyers in the way that the agency paradigm assumes.”

None of the key assump­tions under­ly­ing the appli­ca­tion of an agency rela­tion­ship to a death-sen­tenced client and his lawyer are valid in the post-con­vic­tion con­text. When the law already rec­og­nizes equi­table excep­tions to hold­ing a client respon­si­ble for his lawyer’s actions under cir­cum­stances with less dras­tic con­se­quences, an excep­tion should also be made for death row inmates so that their lawyer’s neg­li­gence does not pre­clude fed­er­al review of constitutional claims.

Judge Rosemary Barkett, con­cur­ring in Hutchinson v. Florida, 677 F.3d 1097 (11th Cir. 2012)

Federal appeals rest on the legal doc­trine of habeas cor­pus, which forces the gov­ern­ment to jus­ti­fy its incar­cer­a­tion of a per­son. Known as the ​“Great Writ,” dat­ing back at least eight cen­turies and com­mon­ly viewed as ​“the most cel­e­brat­ed writ in the English law,” habeas cor­pus is the only type of court order explic­it­ly rec­og­nized in the Constitution as a right of the American peo­ple. The Supreme Court has held that ​“there is no high­er duty than to main­tain it unim­paired.” But the agency doc­trine, cou­pled with AEDPA’s strict and unspar­ing require­ments, too often result in death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers los­ing their habeas rights even when all par­ties admit that the true fault lay with the lawyer.

It is no acci­dent that habeas cor­pus has time and again played a cen­tral role in nation­al crises, where­in the claims of order and of lib­er­ty clash most acute­ly, not only in England in the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, but also in America from our very begin­nings, and today. Although in form the Great Writ is sim­ply a mode of pro­ce­dure, its his­to­ry is inex­tri­ca­bly inter­twined with the growth of fun­da­men­tal rights of per­son­al lib­er­ty. For its func­tion has been to pro­vide a prompt and effi­ca­cious rem­e­dy for what­ev­er soci­ety deems to be intol­er­a­ble restraints. Its root prin­ci­ple is that in a civ­i­lized soci­ety, gov­ern­ment must always be account­able to the judi­cia­ry for a man’s impris­on­ment: if the impris­on­ment can­not be shown to con­form with the fun­da­men­tal require­ments of law, the indi­vid­ual is enti­tled to his immediate release.

U.S. Supreme Court, Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391 (1963)

Some warned before AEDPA was passed in 1996 that its harsh pro­vi­sions would under­mine the essen­tial tra­di­tion of fed­er­al habeas review. An inter­nal Clinton admin­is­tra­tion memo stat­ed that the law ​“must pro­vide for com­pe­tent tri­al coun­sel” and not­ed the ​“high rate of error in cap­i­tal tri­als” which habeas review helped address. But no such guar­an­tee of com­pe­ten­cy was includ­ed in the final bill. Days before the law passed, New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that it would ​“intro­duce a virus that will sure­ly spread through­out our sys­tem of laws.” 

Equitable Tolling: An Inadequate and Infrequent Solution

In rare cas­es, pris­on­ers may receive ​“equi­table tolling,” where a court extends the AEDPA dead­line in the inter­ests of jus­tice. Yet, as Mr. Liptak wrote, the Supreme Court has ​“con­struct­ed a vari­ety of unsat­is­fac­to­ry doc­trines built on the fic­tion of agency,” which lim­it equi­table tolling to cas­es where the attor­ney aban­doned the pris­on­er entire­ly and the pris­on­er demon­strat­ed extra­or­di­nary dili­gence in try­ing to pur­sue his appeals. In 2010 the Court ruled in favor of Albert Holland, who wrote his attor­ney a stream of let­ters about the fed­er­al fil­ing dead­line, con­tact­ed mul­ti­ple courts, and filed com­plaints with the Florida Bar Association when his attor­ney did not update him on the sta­tus of his case. The Supreme Court not­ed that Mr. Holland, who spent hours in the prison law library, appeared to be a sharp legal mind who was ​“right about the law” where his attor­ney was ​“wrong.” 

[I]f I had a com­pe­tent, con­flict-free, post­con­vic­tion, appel­late attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing me, I would not have to write you this let­ter. I’m not try­ing to get on your nerves. I just would like to know exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing with my case on appeal.

Albert Holland, let­ter to the Clerk of the Florida Supreme Court

Mr. Holland even tried to file his own fed­er­al habeas peti­tion. But the state argued, and the Florida Supreme Court agreed, that he ​“could not file any pro se papers with the court while he was rep­re­sent­ed by coun­sel, includ­ing papers seek­ing new coun­sel.” Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rec­og­nized this sit­u­a­tion as ​“per­verse,” yet as Judge Barkett point­ed out in Mr. Hutchinson’s case, it is all too com­mon. ​“Even if a client want­ed to cor­rect his lawyer’s mis­takes, he would not be enti­tled to do so,” she wrote, because courts ​“rou­tine­ly decline to con­sid­er pro se plead­ings when an inmate is rep­re­sent­ed by counsel.” 

Mr. Holland’s attor­ney failed to inform him when the Florida Supreme Court decid­ed his state post-con­vic­tion appeal, which restart­ed the clock on his one-year fed­er­al dead­line. Mr. Holland learned of the deci­sion a few weeks lat­er in the law library and filed his habeas peti­tion the next day, but it was too late. Multiple low­er courts ruled that Mr. Holland was not dili­gent enough and denied him equi­table tolling before the Supreme Court ruled in his favor. 

Justice Stephen Breyer, writ­ing for the major­i­ty, acknowl­edged that equi­table relief in habeas cas­es can cor­rect injus­tices that ​“arise from a hard and fast adher­ence to more absolute legal rules, which, if strict­ly applied, threat­en the evils of archa­ic rigid­i­ty.“3 But he also wrote that a ​“gar­den vari­ety claim of excus­able neglect” by an attor­ney was not enough to give the client anoth­er chance at fed­er­al appeals, and he described Mr. Holland’s case as a rare excep­tion to the rule.

Mr. Liptak warned that ​“requir­ing clients to super­vise their lawyers as vig­or­ous­ly as Mr. Holland did mis­ap­pre­hends what most of the rel­e­vant clients are capa­ble of…it seems that only clients with legal acu­men may be enti­tled to solic­i­tude from the courts when their lawyers err.” Mr. Hutchinson was one of those judged not rea­son­ably dili­gent. ​“He did every­thing any rea­son­able client would do to assure that his lawyers pro­tect­ed his inter­ests, includ­ing implor­ing his lawyers to file his post-con­vic­tion plead­ings in a time­ly man­ner,” Judge Barkett wrote.

What oth­er steps could Hutchinson rea­son­ably have tak­en? Should he not have trust­ed his lawyers when they assured him they were aware of and would com­ply with all fil­ing dead­lines? […] [A] rep­re­sent­ed client has every right to assume that his lawyer will com­pe­tent­ly dis­charge his duties.

Judge Barkett, con­cur­ring in Hutchinson

The Holland Court’s exam­ples of ​“gar­den vari­ety” neg­li­gence includ­ed ​“a sim­ple mis­cal­cu­la­tion that leads a lawyer to miss a fil­ing dead­line” — the exact sit­u­a­tion that led the Eleventh Circuit to rule against Mr. Hutchinson. ​“The fact that [Mr. Hutchinson’s lawyers] ought to have known bet­ter does not jus­ti­fy equi­table tolling,” the major­i­ty wrote. The judges then made a stunning admission:

If attor­ney mis­cal­cu­la­tion, error, or neg­li­gence were enough for equi­table tolling, the [fed­er­al habeas] statute of lim­i­ta­tions would be tolled to the brink of extinc­tion because in prac­ti­cal­ly every case where there is a fail­ure to meet the fil­ing dead­line an attor­ney is at fault.4

It must also be not­ed that time­li­ness is an affir­ma­tive defense; a late appeal will be accept­ed unless the state decides to argue for dis­missal based on the dead­line. State attor­neys have suc­cess­ful­ly argued that death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers for­feit­ed all fed­er­al appeals because their attor­neys filed one day late. For exam­ple, attor­neys for Kenneth Rouse filed his peti­tion one day late even though an expe­ri­enced habeas lawyer had giv­en them the cor­rect dead­line. Mr. Rouse lost his chance for a fed­er­al court to review evi­dence that a juror had failed to dis­close his mother’s rape and mur­der, called Black men like Mr. Rouse a racial slur, and claimed that Black men rape white women for ​“brag­ging rights.” Alabama suc­cess­ful­ly blocked Eugene Clemons’ fed­er­al appeals because, even though his attor­neys filed a month in advance, the peti­tion fell behind a fil­ing cab­i­net in the clerk’s office.5 Johnny Ray Johnson and Keith Thurmond were both exe­cut­ed in Texas after the same appoint­ed attor­ney, Jerome Godinich, tried to file their peti­tions after hours on the due date and found that the clerk’s time stamp was bro­ken.6

Gregory Scott Johnson’s habeas dead­line was Monday, June 28. His lawyer mailed his peti­tion on Friday, June 25. But the court did not receive the peti­tion until Tuesday the 29th, and the state moved to strike Mr. Johnson’s fed­er­al appeals for being untime­ly. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals acknowl­edged that Mr. Johnson’s lawyer ​“bun­gled the job” and should have known that appeals are only con­sid­ered filed once received by the court. But the Seventh Circuit ruled against Mr. Johnson:

No one inter­fered with Johnson’s abil­i­ty to pur­sue col­lat­er­al relief in a time­ly fash­ion. He wants us to treat his own lawyer as the source of inter­fer­ence, but lawyers are agents. Their acts (good and bad) are attrib­uted to the clients they rep­re­sent. […] So it is as if Johnson him­self had made the deci­sions that led to the delay.

The state of Indiana exe­cut­ed Mr. Johnson nine months later.

Systemic Failure to Provide Competent Counsel in Alabama and Florida

DPI found that over half (31/​57) of pris­on­ers denied fed­er­al review due to missed dead­lines came from just two states — Alabama and Florida — despite those states account­ing for only 18% of death sen­tences and 12% of exe­cu­tions in the mod­ern era. It is not a coin­ci­dence that these same states have his­tor­i­cal­ly failed to appoint com­pe­tent coun­sel for death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in state post-conviction appeals. 

For many years Alabama was the only state in the coun­try that refused to appoint attor­neys for cap­i­tal state post-con­vic­tion appeals. The state relied on pro bono rep­re­sen­ta­tion alone, often from large out-of-state law firms. Even if the vol­un­teer lawyers were ​“über-qual­i­fied” on paper, as the state once boast­ed in a brief, they were not always com­pe­tent to defend a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er. Corey Maples’ pro bono attor­neys at the white-shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell failed to noti­fy their client or the court when they left the firm. As a result, the firm’s mail­room returned the deci­sion in Mr. Maples’ case unopened; Mr. Maples learned that no appeal had been time­ly filed when the state moved to set his exe­cu­tion date. Alabama offi­cials repeat­ed­ly argued that Mr. Maples was not enti­tled to equi­table tolling. But the Supreme Court held in 2012 that the unique cir­cum­stances in Mr. Maples’ case amount­ed to an ​“aban­don­ment” by coun­sel, sev­er­ing the ​“agency” rela­tion­ship. The rul­ing allowed him to suc­cess­ful­ly pur­sue his fed­er­al appeals and he was recent­ly resen­tenced to life in prison. Mr. Maples’ for­mer lawyers faced no pro­fes­sion­al con­se­quences.7

Lawyers have missed dead­lines and for­feit­ed fed­er­al review for Alabama clients with inno­cence claims, includ­ing William Kuenzel, Robin ​“Rocky” Myers, and Christopher Barbour. Mr. Kuenzel had an ali­bi and the only phys­i­cal evi­dence in the case point­ed to the prosecution’s star wit­ness, but his lawyers missed a fil­ing dead­line by five months, and Mr. Kuenzel died in 2022 while await­ing exe­cu­tion. Mr. Myers received the state’s first clemen­cy grant in 25 years this past February; Gov. Kay Ivey said, ​“I have enough ques­tions about Mr. Myers’ guilt that I can­not move for­ward with exe­cut­ing him.” His appoint­ed lawyer had nev­er before worked on a cap­i­tal case and admit­ted that he did ​“not remem­ber[]” that there was a one-year dead­line for fed­er­al habeas peti­tions. And after DNA test­ing from a rape and mur­der scene exclud­ed Mr. Barbour, a fed­er­al court allowed his ​“actu­al inno­cence” claim to pro­ceed last year, a first in the state’s his­to­ry.8 Mr. Barbour pre­vi­ous­ly came with­in 48 hours of exe­cu­tion after his ear­li­er fed­er­al attor­neys missed his filing deadline.

Lawyers who do post-con­vic­tion work in cap­i­tal cas­es face a daunt­ing array of chal­lenges: They must typ­i­cal­ly rein­ves­ti­gate the evi­dence for both guilt and pun­ish­ment; can­vass wit­ness­es called and uncalled; plumb a defen­dan­t’s crim­i­nal, social and fam­i­ly his­to­ry; and round up and study thou­sands of pages of records. They must also nav­i­gate an ever-shift­ing land­scape of appel­late dead­lines and pro­ce­dures, iden­ti­fy promis­ing issues and craft a detailed peti­tion — all while under the pres­sure of defend­ing a client whose life may depend on their success.

Ken Armstrong, The Marshall Project

Florida’s record of poor appel­late rep­re­sen­ta­tion can be traced in part to pol­i­cy changes a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago that were intend­ed to save the state mon­ey. Florida offi­cials cre­at­ed a ​“reg­istry” of attor­neys eli­gi­ble for appoint­ment in cap­i­tal cas­es and sub­se­quent­ly closed a major region­al office of ded­i­cat­ed habeas attor­neys. But reports quick­ly emerged of sub­par rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero tes­ti­fied before the state leg­is­la­ture in 2005 that the reg­istry attor­neys per­formed ​“some of the worst lawyer­ing I have ever seen” and wrote some of the ​“worst briefs I have read.” Florida alone accounts for 39% of the missed-dead­lines cas­es but only 13% of death sen­tences in the mod­ern era. Most of the missed dead­lines occurred in the 2000s, the decade fol­low­ing the cre­ation of the registry. 

Attorney Jefferson Morrow filed Floyd Damren’s habeas peti­tion 208 days late after being appoint­ed through the reg­istry. The Marshall Project report­ed that when ​“pressed for an expla­na­tion in court, he said he was inex­pe­ri­enced in habeas law, sent a peti­tion to the wrong court and was nev­er able to deter­mine the dead­line in the first place.” Despite Mr. Morrow’s ​“gross­ly neg­li­gent” work, he became a Florida tri­al judge, while Mr. Damren remains on death row. Another reg­istry lawyer who missed two habeas fil­ing dead­lines admit­ted, ​“It was a ter­ri­ble mis­take for me to get involved.” 

[I]t is hard for me to fath­om how a lawyer who asked for and received the appoint­ment of this Court, could abdi­cate the most basic func­tion of fil­ing the peti­tion on time. […] I would be remiss if I did not share my deep con­cern that in these cas­es our fed­er­al sys­tem of jus­tice fell short in the very sit­u­a­tion where the stakes could not be higher.

Judge Timothy J. Corrigan, in an order dis­miss­ing three Florida cas­es where reg­istry attor­neys missed fed­er­al habeas deadlines

Another effect of inad­e­quate and flawed appoint­ment process­es is that some pris­on­ers are not appoint­ed coun­sel until the dead­line has almost elapsed — or even passed entire­ly. But courts have shown lit­tle sym­pa­thy. Gary Lawrence ​“contend[ed] that delays in Florida’s pro­gram for appoint­ing post­con­vic­tion coun­sel and oth­er issues out­side of his con­trol caused 298 days to pass before Florida appoint­ed an attor­ney who took an active role in his post­con­vic­tion case,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the major­i­ty in deny­ing Mr. Lawrence relief in 2007. ​“These facts have lit­tle rel­e­vance to our analy­sis.”9

James Ford filed a motion for a new lawyer before his dead­line, but the court didn’t appoint him a new lawyer until after the dead­line passed. The court then refused to accept his habeas peti­tion even though his new lawyer filed it with­in 12 days of appoint­ment.10 Mr. Ford was exe­cut­ed on February 13, the first per­son to die by state order in Florida this year, with no fed­er­al court hav­ing reviewed his claim that he could not be exe­cut­ed due to intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Experts found that Mr. Ford, age 65, had a men­tal age of about 13 years old before his exe­cu­tion and had pre­vi­ous­ly scored with­in the bot­tom 2% of the pop­u­la­tion on an IQ test. 

Some schol­ars have pro­posed that all ​“gar­den vari­ety” attor­ney mis­takes, like mis­cal­cu­lat­ing dead­lines, for­get­ting to sub­mit peti­tions, or fil­ing peti­tions in the wrong court, should enti­tle pris­on­ers to equi­table tolling when the con­se­quence could be an exe­cu­tion that vio­lates the Constitution. Judge Barkett argued that the agency prin­ci­ple is bad pol­i­cy in cap­i­tal cas­es because pun­ish­ing pris­on­ers does not improve the actions of their lawyers, espe­cial­ly when the lawyers face no con­sis­tent pro­fes­sion­al sanc­tions for miss­ing dead­lines and are not sub­ject to mal­prac­tice law­suits like they are in civil cases. 

Sergeant Jeffrey Hutchinson

The ​“real­i­ty is that death row inmates’ access to com­pe­tent, post-con­vic­tion legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion is at best incon­sis­tent and at worst nonex­is­tent,” Judge Barkett wrote, ​“and their abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate freely and active­ly par­tic­i­pate in their lit­i­ga­tion is seri­ous­ly com­pro­mised. […] Under this real­i­ty, I ques­tion whether strict adher­ence to the prin­ci­ple that a death row inmate must bear the con­se­quences of his lawyer’s neg­li­gence is fair or just.”

Mr. Hutchinson’s attor­neys chal­lenged the agency rela­tion­ship in their final Supreme Court peti­tion, ask­ing that the Court ​“grant review to ensure that oth­er cap­i­tal peti­tion­ers like Mr. Hutchinson, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with sig­nif­i­cant cog­ni­tive impair­ments, are not denied all fed­er­al habeas review due to no fault of their own.” The Court ​“should not allow a sit­u­a­tion where a wound­ed com­bat vet­er­an is still being blamed for fail­ing to nav­i­gate the minu­ti­ae of high­ly tech­ni­cal issues of tolling and fed­er­al­ism from death row that have vexed the bench and bar for decades.” The Court denied Mr. Hutchinson’s peti­tions with­out com­ment.11 He died by lethal injec­tion at 8:15 p.m. on May 1.

👉🏻 Find footnotes here

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Leah Roemer, May 28, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde