Death Penalty News

WEST JORDAN, Utah — A mental competency report prepared by a psychologist from Utah's Department of Health & Human Services has found that Ralph Leroy Menzies is incompetent to be executed by firing squad. A copy of the report, filed in West Jordan's 3rd District Court and obtained by FOX 13 News on Friday, declared that Menzies' dementia is so bad that he cannot be restored to any competency to be put to death. "This condition impacts Mr. Menzies' cognitive abilities such that he is unaware of the crime for which he is convicted, the parameters of the case (e.g., victim's identity, specifics acts he was found to have committed, etc.), the capital nature of the sentence he received, or how the punishment will be carried out," the Utah Department of Health & Human Services' evaluator, Dr. Michael Brooks, wrote.

The 87-year-old defendant was deemed unfit to appear in court due to communication difficulties engendered by his long detention. His trial must not be prolonged. The Shizuoka District Court has begun the retrial of Iwao Hakamata, whose death sentence was previously finalized over the 1966 murder and robbery of a family of four in Shizuoka Prefecture. Retrials are held in cases when sufficient evidence that is likely to prove the defendant’s innocence is newly found.

A recently released report of the advocacy group, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), Death Row USA, Spring, 2022, brought some small bits of good news for death penalty opponents and further signs of the withering of capital punishment in this country. The LDF found that as of April 1, 2022 there were 2,414 people on death row. That is still a lot, but 833 of these people were in jurisdictions with active moratoria on executions. They include California, Pennsylvania, and Oregon, as well as the federal government. The total April 2022 death row population represented a 3.6% decline from April of the previous year when there were 2,504 death row inmates and a 35% drop from 2001 when the death row population peaked at 3,717. But for those who remain, life on death row is cruel and inhumane . Recognizing this, some death penalty states have voluntarily taken steps to dismantle their death rows or radically alter the conditions of those who are confined there. Others have been forced to do so ...

The number of prisoners on death row across the United States continues to decline while the average amount of time they have been on death row approaches 19 years, according to a new report from the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). BJS’s June 2021 annual death penalty review found that 2,570 prisoners were under sentence of death in the custody of 29 states and the U.S. federal government as of December 31, 2019, down 2.1% from the 2,626 prisoners on death row at the end of 2018. BJS reports that 2019 was the 19th consecutive year in which the number of prisoners on the nation’s death row declined, down by more than a thousand since reaching a peak of 3,601 in 2000. The decrease in the number of death-sentenced prisoners comes even as the average duration of their stay on death row prior to exoneration, resentencing, death, or execution approaches 2 decades. BJS reports that the average amount of time a prisoner has been incarcerated pursuant to their latest ...

As part of Slate’s project on the 80 most influential Americans over 80 , we spoke to some members of the list to reflect on aging, work, and life in their ninth decade and beyond. Sister Helen Prejean, 81, is a Catholic nun and activist for the abolition of the death penalty. She came to fame with her 1993 book, Dead Man Walking , about her experiences as a spiritual advisor to two men on death row. Susan Sarandon won an Oscar for playing Prejean in the 1995 movie adaptation. Slate spoke with Prejean by phone on Friday. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.  Molly Olmstead: Has your experience of aging changed the way you approach your activism? Sister Helen Prejean : Absolutely. Because I’m very, very conscious now that I don’t have an unlimited time. But these life-and-death issues—cruelty and torture and the death penalty— attenuate your consciousness to get out of the ego thing of self. Because it plunges you into, “I better use my time well.” I don’t wan...