Death Penalty News

Alva Campbell was supposed to die on Nov. 15. That was the date chosen by Ohio, which had convicted and condemned Campbell for murdering a teenager, Charles Dials, during a 1997 carjacking in Columbus, Ohio. Inside the death chamber that morning, prison officials spent more than an hour searching Campbell's arms and legs for a vein into which they could inject the lethal drug cocktail. They comforted him as they prepared to kill him, providing the 69-year-old with a wedge pillow to help with breathing problems related to his years of heavy smoking. After about 80 minutes, they gave up and returned Campbell to his cell, where he sits awaiting his next date with death, now set for June 5, 2019. The pathetic scene was a fitting symbol of the state of capital punishment in America in 2017, a vile practice that descends further into macabre farce even as it declines in use. Campbell would have been the 24th person put to death last year. That's less than 1/4 of the 98...

In a New Year’s Eve display of liberal newspaper death penalty abolition harmony – buoyed by the release of the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) annual report evidencing another year in the long-observable trend of capital punishment’s disuse and disfavor in America – both the Washington Post and New York Times’s editorial boards published opinion pieces arguing for an end to what the Times called a “cruel and pointless” practice; one that is “savage, racially biased, arbitrary,” and which “the developed world agreed to reject...long ago.” On her well-followed Twitter account, intrepid anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean opined that the Times “opened the New Year with a bang: a full-throated exhortation against the death penalty. The editorial hit all the right notes.” While I hardly disagree with Sister Helen on anything concerning death penalty abolition – and, despite all the truthful and pointed invectives the Times’s editorial board did skillfully use...

By at least 1 important measure, the Trump administration's simplistic get-tough-on-crime rhetoric did not move the country backward in the president's 1st year: The death penalty, which Americans once favored at near-consensus rates, was a historically rare punishment. For those of us who would prefer to see no executions, this is as much a call to continue the argument as it is a cause for celebration. According to the Death Penalty Information Center's annual report, 2017 saw the 2nd-lowest number of death sentences since 1972, with 39. Though 2016 saw only 31, these numbers nevertheless mark a steep decline since a peak of 315 in 1996. 2017 also saw the 2nd-lowest number of executions - 23 - since 1991, outpacing 2016 by only 3. Executions peaked at 98 in 1999 and have also dropped precipitously since. Notorious execution states such as Texas and Oklahoma had a relatively quiet 2017. These trends mean that the number of people on death row fell for the 17th strai...

From assassinations to space missions, 1968 was a year of radical firsts in American history. But amid all the commemorative ruckus over the 50th anniversary of that seminal year, one of the most striking precedents it set has been largely forgotten: 1968 was the 1st year in the history of the United States in which not a single prisoner was executed. Today, the nation is edging closer to repeating that non-feat - but this time, the reasons are quite different. 50 years ago, moral objections were killing the death penalty. In a nation shaken by the racial injustices exposed by the civil rights movement, public support for capital punishment plunged. Pollsters reported that more Americans opposed the death penalty than supported it. Several states had banned the practice. Leaders from Robert Kennedy to local politicians called for its abolition; even the federal Attorney General, the nation's top law-enforcement official, joined them. A Supreme Court justice wrote off death p...

There were just 23 executions carried out in the U.S. in 2017, a slight uptick from 20 executions in 2016, but far below the 98 executions states carried out in 1999. While 31 states still have a death penalty, sentences and executions have been trending downward for a generation. Today, states are scrambling to find drugs to use in lethal injections, thanks in part to drug companies’ increasing reluctance to allow states to use their products to kill people. This shortage, and the fact that existing supplies are expiring, will make it even harder for states to carry out the death penalty in 2018, even though U.S. courts handed out 39 more death sentences in 2017, according to a Death Penalty Information Center report released in mid-December. The lack of drugs will keep people on death row longer, and leave states looking for alternatives. “In the long term, it looks as though death sentences and executions are going to remain low,” Death Penalty Information Center Executi...

Alva Campbell was supposed to die on Nov. 15. That was the date chosen by the State of Ohio, which had convicted and condemned Mr. Campbell for murdering a teenager, Charles Dials, during a 1997 carjacking in Columbus. Inside the death chamber that morning, prison officials spent more than an hour searching Mr. Campbell’s arms and legs for a vein into which they could inject the lethal drug cocktail. They comforted him as they prepared to kill him, providing the 69-year-old with a wedge pillow to help with breathing problems related to his years of heavy smoking. After about 80 minutes, they gave up and returned Mr. Campbell to his cell, where he sits awaiting his next date with death, now set for June 5, 2019. The pathetic scene was a fitting symbol of the state of capital punishment in America in 2017, a vile practice that descends further into macabre farce even as it declines in use. Mr. Campbell would have been the 24th person put to death last year. That’s less tha...

Dallas County twice tried to condemn killers but didn't send anyone to death row in 2017.  It hasn't for three years — and neither has Harris County. Both were once leaders in a state known for putting convicted killers to death.  And although Texas remained the national leader in executions in 2017 — with seven — executions and new death sentences have been steadily declining over the past decade.  Nationwide, there were 39 death sentences issued in 2017, and 31 percent of those came from just three counties: Riverside County, Calif.; Clark County, Nev.; and Maricopa County, Ariz., according to a year-end study by the Death Penalty Information Center. In Texas, only four people were sent to death row this year.  And for the first time in more than 30 years, no one from Harris County was executed in 2017. Only one from Dallas was executed.  Terry Edwards, 43, was put to death by lethal injection in January after judges denied multi...

The death penalty was again on the decline in 2017, but the problems that accompany the finality of capital punishment remain. This year, 23 people were executed— the second fewest executions in the past 25 years, coming in just behind the 20 inmates who were put to death in 2016. Since 2009, the number of executions across the United States has generally declined, with public support for capital punishment dropping by 5 percent to 55 percent this year, marking the lowest level since 1972, the year the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. “There will be times when numbers fluctuate—particularly following historic highs or lows—but the steady long-term decline in the death penalty since the 1990s suggests that in most of the country, the death penalty is becoming obsolete,” said Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. But even as the numbers of executions fall, the flaws and controversies surrounding capital punishment could...

With both arms strapped to a gurney convicted cop-killer Torrey McNabb raised both middle fingers and told the state of Alabama "I hate you mother****ers" just before he was shot up with a lethal combination of drugs on Oct. 19. Whether it was from the execution chamber at Hollman Correctional facility in Atmore, or inside the state legislature, the death penalty continued to make news across Alabama in 2017. Alabama also continued to be an outlier from the national downward trend of states executing inmates, according to one national report. Of the nation's 23 executions this year, 75 percent took place in four southern states: Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and Alabama. Texas had seven executions, Arkansas four, and Florida tied Alabama each had three executions - McNabb, Tommy Arthur, and Robert Melson. McNabb was convicted of the 1997 murder of Montgomery police officer Anderson Gordon. Arthur, known as the "Houdini of Death Row" for avoidi...