Death Penalty News

Alabama plans to execute Jeffery Lee on Thursday via lethal injection after a down-to-the-wire decision by the federal courts halted his death by nitrogen hypoxia in June. In response, Gov. Kay Ivey set the 30-hour window for the execution to be carried out by lethal injection beginning at 12 a.m. on Thursday, September 17, and expiring at 6 a.m. on Friday, September 18. Barring any further court action, the execution will take place at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for the Pasco County execution of Dominick Occhicone, scheduled for July 28. Defense attorneys argue the 80-year-old double-murderer is too old and frail to be executed under the 8th Amendment. HOLIDAY, Fla. - Dominick Occhicone is scheduled to face execution on July 28 for the 1986 cold-blooded murders of his ex-girlfriend's parents in Pasco County, sparking an intense legal battle over his advanced age and failing health. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for Dominick Occhicone, who has spent nearly 40 years on death row, according to state records. The man is about to turn 81 and was convicted of killing Raymond and Martha Artzner at their home in Holiday. The warrant comes shortly after the state executed 74-year-old Dusty Ray Spencer last week. If the scheduled July 14 execution of 74-year-old Dennis Sochor proceeds, he will surpass Spencer as the oldest inmate executed in Florida since 1976. Court records show that Occhicone wen...

In 2008, a majority of the Supreme Court decided that executing a man who raped his eight-year-old stepdaughter so violently that she required emergency surgery violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. That’s the holding of Kennedy v. Louisiana , 554 U.S. 407. Four justices disagreed. Sixteen years later, multiple states have passed laws saying the majority was wrong, and they intend to prove it.

June 24 (Reuters) - A conservative federal judge on Wednesday took the position that despite a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring the death penalty for child rape, prosecutors today may be free to seek capital punishment in cases involving sexual offenses against children. St. Louis-based U.S. District Judge Joshua ​Divine, who was appointed to the bench only last year by Republican President Donald Trump, delivered his views in an unusual ‌court opinion issued on the same day he was set to sentence a Missouri man who faced a maximum prison term of 20 years.

The Supreme Court these days is generally in the business of helping executions go forward. But on Thursday night, the court did something notable: It told Alabama no. Even then, the court wasn't unanimous. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the refusal to let the nitrogen gas execution of Jeffery Lee proceed. What prompted the rare rejection? In line with the typical shadow docket practice, the court didn't explain itself. Nor did the dissenters, who merely noted their disagreement. But a deeper look at the case helps us understand why a majority of the court was unwilling to help the state this time.

After a week of legal volleyball, Alabama death row inmate Jeffery Lee’s execution—scheduled for Thursday evening—was called off after federal courts called the state’s nitrogen gas execution method “likely unconstitutional.” The state took the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping Lee could still be put to death tonight.  In an order issued at 8:10 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that it would not lift a ban on Alabama executing Lee via nitrogen . In a short court order, the justices denied Alabama’s motion to go ahead with the execution.  Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch would have granted the appeal and let the execution proceed, according to the order. 

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama is waging a last-minute legal fight to execute a man with nitrogen gas on Thursday night, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to set aside a judge’s findings that the method violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen protocol is unconstitutional and blocked the state from using it to execute Jeffery Lee , 49. The Alabama attorney general’s office is appealing the decision. The outcome of the eleventh-hour legal battle will determine if Lee’s execution goes forward Thursday night with nitrogen gas. It could also help determine the future of the controversial execution method Alabama began using in 2024.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- A federal judge on Tuesday permanently blocked Alabama from executing an inmate with nitrogen gas after declaring it violates the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Emily Marks issued the ruling hours after an appeals court reversed her initial finding that the method was constitutional. Marks permanently enjoined the state from executing Jeffrey Lee, 49, by nitrogen gas. He was scheduled to be executed Thursday. The decision, for now, blocks the use of the controversial new execution method that the state has championed since 2024, but the issue will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel ordered a lower court to consider the feasibility of a firing squad for Jeffrey Lee but did not immediately stay his scheduled Thursday execution. A federal appeals court Monday ordered a new hearing for an Alabama death row inmate scheduled to be executed on Thursday, but did not stay the execution. The three judge panel of 11th Circuit Court of Appeals judges — U.S. District Court judges Adalberto Jordan, Robert J. Luck and Embry Kidd, appointed by Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden — ruled that Alabama’s use of nitrogen gas for executions violated the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment for Jeffrey Lee, 50, who was sentenced to die for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a pawn shop robbery.

On June 11, the state of Alabama plans to execute Jeffrey Lee with nitrogen hypoxia . He will be the ninth person put to death by this method since its first use in 2024. Lee contends that nitrogen hypoxia will cause him great suffering. On May 28, Federal District Judge Emily Marks agreed with him but said his execution could proceed nonetheless. Hers is a remarkable and shockingly candid decision. It made history, coming after the first trial in the country on the constitutionality of nitrogen hypoxia. To her credit, Judge Marks offered an unusually detailed picture of the pain imposed by capital punishment.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled the execution of Jeffrey Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, 2026, even though his capital jury voted 7-5 against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. Lee to death in 2000, relying on a unique Alabama practice that allowed judges to overrule jury verdicts in death penalty cases. Alabama is the only state where judges overrode jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty routinely—in more than 100 cases since 1976. As a result, nearly 20% of the people currently on Alabama’s death row were sentenced to death by elected judges even after their juries chose life imprisonment without parole.

A second execution would be an unimaginable nightmare for Tony Carruthers and a moral horror for the rest of us. Tony Carruthers is not supposed to be alive . On May 21, Tennessee set out to execute him. It failed. Carruthers survived. He is not the first person to survive an execution in the United States, and he won’t be the last. For Carruthers, the question is: Now what? Will the state seek to arrange a second execution?

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ruled that execution by nitrogen gas does not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, rejecting an Alabama inmate’s claim that it causes excessive suffering. The ruling came after the first bench trial in the country to examine the constitutionality of the execution method that has now been used to put eight people to death, seven in Alabama and one in Louisiana. The ruling clears the way for Alabama and other states to continue with the method and is a setback for critics who hoped a fuller examination of Alabama’s protocol would halt its use.

Thursday’s execution was blocked by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “pending further order” from the court. A federal appeals court has temporarily halted Thursday’s scheduled execution of Texas death row inmate Edward Busby, citing concerns over his eligibility for capital punishment because of intellectual disability. The 2-1 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is in place “pending further order” of the court. Busby argued that a federal district court improperly denied the inmate’s request for funding to test him for intellectual disability. The appeal also provided two new tests from experts, including one provided by the state, that his lawyers argue prove Busby is intellectually disabled.

When President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, he directed his administration to “ restor[e] the death penalty .” His embrace of capital punishment helped fuel a surge in executions at the state level last year, as I previously reported , and led the Justice Department to produce a report on “strengthening” the federal death penalty, which was released late last month. In the report, the Justice Department defended the use of pentobarbital – a powerful sedative – for lethal injections, criticizing the Biden administration’s determination that it may cause “unnecessary pain and suffering.” Nevertheless, citing ongoing legal challenges to pentobarbital use and related problems obtaining the drugs used in lethal injections, the DOJ recommended expanding the list of federal execution methods by adding firing squads, electrocution, and lethal gas.

The high court ruled in 2002 that executing people with intellectual disabilities violated the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Supreme Court will clarify how IQ scores should be evaluated when a death sentence is barred based on an intellectual disability. The court already ruled in 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia , that executing people with intellectual disabilities violated the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” but justices did not define intellectual disability.

A Hungarian national accused in the murders of two elderly, disabled men in South Florida faces second-degree murder charges. While some reports have discussed the potential for capital punishment, Florida law currently restricts the death penalty to first-degree murder convictions, and federal constitutional law prohibits automatic death sentences for any class of person, including undocumented immigrants. Zsolt Zsolyomi, 26, a native of Hungary, entered the United States on a 90-day visa waiver in 2022 but overstayed, rendering him an undocumented immigrant according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In the summer of 2024, he was arrested in Miami Beach on charges including petit theft and strong-armed robbery. ICE issued a detainer for his deportation, but he was released under supervision with an ankle monitor instead of immediate removal. He subsequently disabled the monitoring device and became a fugitive. Elderly gay men Zsolyomi allegedly altered his appearance...

February 21, 2006, a California court’s deci­sion effec­tive­ly halt­ed the planned exe­cu­tion of Michael Angelo Morales, mark­ing the start of California’s 20-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tion sched­ul­ing and throw­ing into the spot­light the ten­sion between physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions and their pledge to show ​“ the utmost respect for life .” " The events sur­round­ing Morales’s impend­ing fate brought to the sur­face the long-run­ning schism between law and med­i­cine, rais­ing the ques­tion of whether any ben­e­fi­cial con­nec­tion between the pro­fes­sions ever exist­ed in the exe­cu­tion con­text. History shows it sel­dom did. Decades of botched exe­cu­tions prove it. " — Professor Deborah Denno, The Lethal Injection Quandary: How Medicine Has Dismantled the Death Penalty

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As Florida accelerates executions at a pace unseen in modern history, multiple death row prisoners with execution dates this month have filed claims with the Florida Supreme Court raising serious concerns about the State’s repeated failure to follow its own execution protocol. Courts have long held that under the Eighth Amendment, execution protocols must be followed precisely because deviations create a substantial risk of severe pain and unconstitutional punishment.

New drugs and med­ical treat­ments under­go rig­or­ous test­ing to ensure they are safe and effec­tive for pub­lic use. Under fed­er­al and state reg­u­la­tions, this test­ing typ­i­cal­ly involves clin­i­cal tri­als with human sub­jects, who face sig­nif­i­cant health and safe­ty risks as the first peo­ple exposed to exper­i­men­tal treat­ments. That is why the law requires them to be ful­ly informed of the poten­tial effects and give their vol­un­tary con­sent to par­tic­i­pate in trials. Yet these reg­u­la­tions have not been fol­lowed when states seek to use nov­el and untest­ed exe­cu­tion meth­ods — sub­ject­ing pris­on­ers to poten­tial­ly tor­tur­ous and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly painful deaths. Some experts and advo­cates argue that states must be bound by the eth­i­cal and human rights prin­ci­ples of bio­med­ical research before using these meth­ods on prisoners.