Death Penalty News

The State of Alabama plans to execute Joe Nathan James on July 28. Like 8 other men before him, the State targeted Mr. James for an execution date because he had not participated in his own execution by choosing his execution method. In June 2018, the State of Alabama enacted a law that added nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative execution method to lethal injection. The law provided a 30-day window in which people sentenced to death were forced to choose between two different methods of execution—nitrogen hypoxia and lethal injection. The use of nitrogen gas as a method of execution is an untested process not previously used in a U.S. execution. The State of Alabama still has not created or implemented a protocol to carry out nitrogen hypoxia executions—making it impossible for people on the state’s death row to make an informed decision about the method. Many people sentenced to death refused to cooperate in their own executions by choosing a method. Many human rights groups have condem...

On Thursday the United States Supreme Court gave Alabama the go-ahead to execute Matthew Reeves , an intellectually disabled death row inmate. His execution was carried out by lethal injection just a few hours later, even though Reeves wanted to be put to death by nitrogen hypoxia. It’s hard to know which is worse: that they executed an intellectually disabled man in the first place or that they ignored his wish to avoid dying by lethal injection. The state actually gave him and everyone else on the state’s death row that grotesque choice in a kind of “speak now or forever hold your peace” ritual. Last June, all of them were marched out of their cells and into the prison yard at Alabama’s William C. Holman Correctional Facility. There they heard a surprising presentation. They were told that they could take advantage of a law enacted in March, 2018 authorizing nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method. They could thus choose the method the state would use to kill them. If they wanted ...

An Alabama inmate who sought execution by nitrogen hypoxia was put to death by lethal injection Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the execution to proceed. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was among 4 justices who would have kept an injunction in place that prevented execution of the inmate, 43-year-old Matthew Reeves . She did not join the dissent, however, by Justice Elena Kagan that was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen G. Breyer. Reeves’ lawyers had contended that he failed to choose execution by nitrogen hypoxia because he didn’t understand the form presenting the choices. Reeves read at a grade-school level because of cognitive deficiencies, according to the evidence. Reeves claimed that the Americans with Disabilities Act required prison officials to explain the form to him. A federal judge and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Atlanta had prevented Reeves’ execution. The appeals court had reasoned that Reeves would still be executed by hydrogen hypoxia...

In what activists warn could be the first in a spike of executions this year, Matthew Reeves and Donald Anthony Grant were killed via lethal injection by the states of Alabama and Oklahoma respectively on Thursday, just one month before a constitutional challenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol goes to trial. The Supreme Court denied an application to stay Grant’s execution on Wednesday, a move overshadowed by the news that Justice Stephen Breyer plans to retire. Reeves’s life was in the high court’s hands Thursday as President Joe Biden began the process of selecting a nominee to succeed Breyer, but the justices reversed lower court rulings to allow the execution to proceed in a split 5-4 decision. The state of Alabama killed Reeves in Holman prison after the legal wrangling ended last night. Both men are Black, and Black and Latino people make up more than half of death row nationally. Activists have long emphasized the systemic racism inherent in the death penalty system. ...

NEW YORK – After Alabama carried out the second execution of the year on Thursday, Jan. 27, the archbishop of Mobile vowed that he and the state’s other prelates will continue to speak out against capital punishment. Matthew Reeves, 44, was executed by lethal injection at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, at 10:24 p.m. ET. The Supreme Court allowed the execution hours earlier when it narrowly sided with the state, and rejected defense claims that Reeves had an intellectual disability that prevented him from choosing a different execution method. “I, and my fellow bishops of the Province of Mobile, have spoken out several times against capital punishment and we will continue to do so,” Archbishop Thomas Rodi of Mobile told Crux in a statement. “In this particular case, it was especially disturbing that an individual with reportedly a very low IQ was executed.” Reeves was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the murder of Willie Johnson on ...

Hamm v. Reeves , a death penalty order that the Supreme Court handed down Thursday night, is an epilogue to a longstanding tension between drug companies that do not wish their products to be used to kill people, and states that are willing to use unreliable drugs to conduct executions if effective sedatives are not available. It’s also unsettlingly cruel. The upshot of the Court’s 5-4 decision in Hamm is that a man was executed using a method that may have caused him excruciating pain, most likely because that man’s disability prevented him from understanding how to opt in to a less painful method of execution. There is significant evidence that Matthew Reeves, a man convicted of murder that the state of Alabama executed after the Supreme Court permitted it to do so on Thursday, had an intellectual disability. Among other things, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in a 2021 dissenting opinion, an expert employed by the state gave Reeves an IQ test and determined that “Reeves’ IQ was wel...

Man executed for 1996 killing after Supreme Court clears way Alabama executed an inmate by lethal injection for a 1996 murder on Thursday after a divided U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state and rejected defense claims the man had an intellectual disability that cost him a chance to choose a less “torturous,” yet untried, execution method. Matthew Reeves, 43, was put to death at Holman Prison after the court lifted a lower court order that had prevented corrections workers from executing the prisoner. He was pronounced dead at 9:24 p.m. CST, state Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. Reeves was convicted of killing a driver who gave him a ride in 1996. Evidence showed Reeves went to a party afterward and celebrated the killing. He had no last words. After craning his neck to look around a few times, Reeves grimaced and looked toward his left arm toward an intravenous line. With his eyes closed and mouth slightly agape, Reeves' abdomen moved repeatedly before he g...

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld a stay of execution for an inmate who said the Alabama Department of Corrections did not give him a proper way to choose another execution method. In a 29-page ruling, the judges — U.S. Circuit Judges Adalberto Jordan; Charles Wilson, and Elizabeth Branch — said they found no reason to overturn U.S. District Judge Austin Huffaker's finding that the DOC failed to accommodate Matthew Reeves' intellectual disabilities when giving inmates the chance to die by nitrogen hypoxia. Huffaker ruled that violated the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). "Notably, this is not a case where a defendant has asked a district court to enjoin a state from executing him altogether, regardless of the method of execution," the three-judge panel wrote. "Mr. Reeves requested only that the court prevent the ADOC from executing him by any method other than the one he would have chosen but for the defendants’ alleged violation of...