Death Penalty News

Former Kansas corrections officials are urging Governor Laura Kelly to grant clemency to the state's death row inmates. Former Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has several reasons why he thinks the state should abolish the death penalty. Werholtz, who served as secretary from 2002 to 2010 and returned on an interim basis in 2019, uses his discussions with peers and family members of victims as well as experiences of seeing wrongly convicted people getting exonerated as his guiding points.

Like Gov. Mike DeWine, most agreed the death penalty is broken and does not deter crime, but not always with the same reasoning. Some people on Ohio’s death row praised Gov. Mike DeWine for having the courage to come out against the death penalty. Others said actions speak louder than words, and they want the governor to commute their death sentences to life without the possibility of parole. But all agreed with the governor on one thing: Ohio’s death penalty law is broken. DeWine said long delays in carrying out executions undermine its intended function as a deterrent. Condemned prisoners resoundingly said that the possibility of being executed never stopped anyone from committing murder.

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York—name a Northeastern state, and you will be naming a place where there is no death penalty. New Hampshire was the latest to join the list in 2019.  But there is one glaring omission.  Pennsylvania. In the Keystone State, capital punishment is legal, even though no one has been executed there since 1999. The state exists in a kind of death penalty limbo, not abolishing it but unable or unwilling to carry out death sentences.  Recent polls suggest that the residents of Pennsylvania are ready to break the logjam. 58% now favor a life sentence rather than the death penalty for people convicted of murder. 

It has been nearly 40 years since my mother, Marguerite, was murdered in a small town near Houston. It has been almost 19 years since the man who murdered her was executed. His death did not heal my pain — I still miss my mother every day — and it did not feel like “justice.” Instead, my personal experience with the death penalty left me firmly convinced that it is both a false promise to the families of murder victims and a failed public policy. That is why, as a current Kansas resident, I urge Gov. Laura Kelly to commute the death sentences of the nine men on Kansas’ death row to life without parole.

Mike DeWine spent years quietly opposing thedeath penalty in Ohio without ever saying so out loud – largely by ensuring no one was executed in the seven-plus years he has been governor. Even though most people could see how he felt, he still had a big moment Tuesday when he formally announced his opposition. One reason the announcement had weight, Today in Ohio podcast hosts said on Wednesday, is that he was the author of the state’s death penalty law 45 years ago. But podcast hosts also said the announcement landed with a bit of a thud, because it was so unsurprising and because DeWine did not do the one thing that would have had a big impact: commute all existing death sentences.

On January 17, 2006, California exe­cut­ed Clarence Ray Allen — the last per­son put to death by the state. Two decades lat­er, California’s death row pop­u­la­tion has fall­en to 580 pris­on­ers , down from its peak near 750 in the mid-2010s . In the time since Mr. Allen’s exe­cu­tion, the death penal­ty in California has seen sus­tained scruti­ny as con­cerns with racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, inno­cence, and costs con­tin­ue to grow. Governor Gavin Newsom has placed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers have been moved to less restric­tive con­di­tions in gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, and advo­cates have urged the gov­er­nor to grant mass clemency.

Gov. Gavin Newsom still has a year and a half left in office, but advocates are starting their call now for him to commute, or reduce, all death sentences in California. The state has 585 people sentenced to death.  Throughout his time in the top office, Newsom has repeatedly spoken out against the death penalty system, calling it “a failure” that discriminates based on race and wealth with “no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent.”

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, disgraced by a corruption scandal that landed him in prison yet heralded by some for clearing the state’s death row, has died. He was 91. Kankakee County Coroner Robert Gessner, a family friend, said Ryan died Friday afternoon at his home in Kankakee, where he was receiving hospice care. Ryan started out a small-town pharmacist but wound up running one of the country’s largest states. Along the way, the tough-on-crime Republican experienced a conversion on the death penalty and won international praise by halting executions as governor and, eventually, emptying death row.

During the seven years I spent portraying President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet on The West Wing , I developed deep respect for the presidency and the monumental challenges its real-life officeholders confront every day. Recent news about President Biden’s exercise of his clemency power has drawn my memory to one of the most difficult “decisions” I made as President Bartlet—one that has stayed in my mind over the ensuing years—to deny clemency to a federal prisoner and allow his execution to proceed.

President Joe Biden is facing growing calls to use his clemency power to commute the sentences of the 40 men on federal death row before he leaves office. The U.S. Constitution grants the president the power to issue pardons—forgiving federal criminal offenses—and commutations, which reduce penalties. The president recently exercised that power to extend a broad pardon to his son, Hunter, despite previously pledging not to do so. The move spares his son a possible prison sentence after he was convicted and pleaded guilty in tax and gun cases.

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The U.S. bishops’ conference was among the groups that urged President Joe Biden on Dec. 9 to commute exiting federal death sentences before President-elect Donald Trump, who has sought to expand the use of capital punishment, returns to the White House. Opponents of capital punishment have argued that Biden, a Catholic and the first U.S. president to have campaigned on an openly anti-death penalty platform, should follow through with concrete action in the post-election lame-duck period.

Under Trump, there were 13 executions in his last six months as president. Biden must clear death row now to stop that and what Albert Camus described as the most cold-blooded premeditated murder. On Jan. 14, 2021, I stood in a small chamber in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, while the federal government carried out an execution. Relegated to a spot 6 feet away from the gurney, I prayed with Corey Johnson, the “Gentle Giant” as he was known on death row.  He was one of the last of 13 people executed under then-President Donald Trump, who carried out an unprecedented killing spree during the final six months of his presidency.

Pope Francis on Dec. 8 made a special appeal for the lives of death row inmates in the United States to be spared. "Let us pray for their sentence to be commuted, changed," said the pope. "Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord to save them from death." The pope's remarks come at a critical time when American Catholic leaders are pushing U.S. President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of the 40 inmates currently on death row. 

With Trump returning to the White House, only mass commutations will stop another federal execution spree. Five days after Orlando Hall was executed in the federal death chamber, Donald Trump appeared in the White House Rose Garden for the 2020 Thanksgiving turkey pardon ceremony. The enormous white birds, Corn and Cob, stood ridiculously as Trump wished them a “very long, happy, and memorable life.” At the Special Confinement Unit inside the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, men on death row watched news coverage on TV.

Joe Biden’s Catholic faith should inspire him to stop the federal death penalty in its tracks In the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election, opponents of the death penalty are mounting a campaign to convince President Biden to commute the sentences of everyone on federal death row. Doing so would be a vindication not only of his announced anti-death penalty position but also of his Catholic faith .

President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.

Ron McAndrew is a former Florida State Penitentiary warden A pro-Trump former Florida prison warden who oversaw executions is urging President Biden to commute all federal and military death sentences before leaving office. "I voted for President Trump in all of his campaigns, and I agree with him on most of his positions, but not the death penalty," Ron McAndrew, former warden of the Florida State Penitentiary, wrote in a letter to the outgoing president. "I have written to President Trump personally to ask him to stop calling for more executions."

Catholic Mobilizing Network urges president in final days to decide in line with Catholic teaching against death penalty Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group that advocates for the abolition of capital punishment in line with Catholic teaching, issued a statement Nov. 6 urging President Joe Biden to take action on the practice during the remainder of his presidency while 40 lives on death row "hang in the balance."

You don't have to tell Daniel Troya and the 40 other denizens of federal death row locked in shed-sized solitary cells for 23 hours a day, every day, that elections have consequences. To them, from inside the U.S. government's only death row located in Terre Haute, Indiana, Tuesday's election is quite literally a matter of life and death: If Kamala Harris wins, they live; if Donald Trump wins, they die. "He's gonna kill everyone here that he can," Troya, 41, said in an email from behind bars. "That's as easy to predict as the sun rising."

Kamala Harris, once openly opposed to the death penalty despite political costs, now avoids the topic as a candidate. Meanwhile, Donald Trump advocates tougher criminal policies, though presidential authority in this area is limited. A few blocks from downtown Richmond, Virginia, the intersection of Spring Street and Belvidere Street now presents a completely different view. Where once stood a grim, old brick building, there is now a modern building with a glass facade reflecting the sun shining on Virginia’s capital. Trees along the wide Belvidere Street give the neighborhood a promenade-like feel, with the James River flowing nearby along the memorial for American war dead.