Death Penalty News

The ACLU is asking state and federal courts to order DNA and fingerprint analysis they say could prove innocence Death row exonerees and innocence advocates are calling on Gov. Bill Lee to halt the May 21 execution of Tony Carruthers to allow for DNA testing on evidence his attorneys said could prove his innocence.  “[DNA] doesn’t take sides,” Tennessee Innocence Project Executive Director Jason Gichner said. “It’s not pro-prosecution, it’s not pro-defense. Law enforcement uses DNA all the time to solve cold cases and at the same time we can use DNA to vindicate innocent people by testing evidence to prove that they didn’t commit the crime.” 

Wood's conviction of the murders of six women and girls in 1987 was largely based on circumstantial evidence. He and his attorney are fighting to stop his execution set for March 13 in Texas. LIVINGSTON, Texas - David Leonard Wood is angry. He’s angry that he’s been on Texas Death Row for nearly four decades when no DNA evidence links him to the murders of six women and girls in El Paso. He’s angry at every cop and prosecutor who put him behind bars, and he’s angry that his community largely believes he is the so-called Desert Killer. But right now, he’s mostly angry about his execution, scheduled for next week.

Attorneys say the prosecution’s theory of the murder case was ‘concocted out of whole cloth’ and based on ‘outdated racial stereotyping.’ For more than 30 years, Pervis Payne has told the same story about what happened on June 27, 1987.  It’s the story he told in court when he testified at his capital murder trial.   On that Saturday afternoon, Payne, then 20, was waiting for his girlfriend, Bobbie Thomas, to return from a trip. They had plans to spend the weekend together in Millington, Tennessee, a small town in Shelby County, and Payne had been checking in at Thomas’s apartment building all day. But when he arrived at the Hiwassee Apartments around 3 p.m. he felt that something was off. He saw a man come running past him, bounding down the stairs as change and papers fell from his pockets. After picking up some of the scattered items, Payne walked to the building’s second floor, where he noticed the door to the apartment across the hall from Thomas’s uni...

A Georgia man convicted of killing his ex-wife and her boyfriend more than 2 decades ago was put to death Wednesday evening, becoming the state's first inmate to be executed this year. Donnie Cleveland Lance, 66, received a lethal injection at the state prison in Jackson. His time of death was 9:05 p.m., Warden Benjamin Ford told witnesses. Lance said nothing when he was given a chance to make a final statement and declined to have a chaplain say a prayer. Strapped to a gurney, he lay mostly still but wiggled his feet. The warden left the execution chamber at 8:54 p.m. Records from previous executions show that the lethal drug generally begins flowing within a minute or 2 of the warden's exit. Lance took about a dozen deep breaths and then became completely still about 3 minutes after the warden left. Lance was sentenced to death for the killings of Sabrina “Joy” Lance and Dwight “Butch” Wood Jr. The 2 were slain on Nov. 8, 1997, at Wood's home in Jackson...

The Southern California jury that convicted a man of murdering his business associate, the man's wife and two children with a sledgehammer will now have to decide whether he is sentenced to death or life in prison - as major questions concerning the quadruple homicide remain unanswered nearly a decade later.    Charles 'Chase' Merritt, 62, was found guilty on Monday, following a trial that spanned more than four months and hinged largely on circumstantial evidence in the February 2010 slayings of Joseph McStay, 40, Summer McStay, 43, and the couple's sons, four-year-old Gianni and three-year-old Joseph Jr.  What is still unknown, despite a large-scale investigation and a months-long murder trial, is where the victims died, and when.  Merritt, who has maintained his innocence, has not been forthcoming with that information.   Merritt's defense attorney James McGee said after the verdict, which was reached on Friday but announced in court ...