Death Penalty News

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.

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.

The Supreme Court today reserved its verdict on a plea seeking a painless procedure for death convicts other than hanging. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta has reserved their judgment after hearing Attorney General for India R Venkataramani, Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora (for Project 39A), and Advocate Rishi Malhotra, who is the petitioner. In 2023, the Supreme Court had allowed an intervention application filed by National Law University, Delhi's Project 39A in the plea seeking a painless procedure for death convicts.

With just weeks remain­ing before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, attor­neys for 72-year-old Samuel Lee Smithers are appeal­ing the dis­missal of their motion filed September 19, 2025, argu­ing that exe­cut­ing an elder­ly per­son vio­lates both Florida and the U.S. Constitutions’ pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and fails to meet any valid peno­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. On September 22, 2025, the Hillsborough County Circuit Court denied Mr. Smithers’ request for an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to con­sid­er his claim. Mr. Smithers is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on October 14, 2025, mak­ing him the 14th per­son set for exe­cu­tion in Florida this year under Governor Ron DeSantis, who has over­seen more exe­cu­tions in a sin­gle year than any pre­vi­ous Florida governor.

WASHINGTON STATE — Fourteen years after the last death sentence was carried out in Washington, the execution chamber at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla was closed in a ceremony held Wednesday morning. Gov. Jay Inslee, who issued a moratorium on the death penalty ten years ago, said shuttering the chamber was the ‘final closure’ of the controversial issue in Washington state law.

The execution of Thomas Creech failed in February when a prison medical team was unable to establish an IV line to carry out the lethal injection. BOISE, Idaho — After a failed execution in February, Idaho's longest-serving death row inmate said a second attempt to execute him would be "cruel and unusual punishment" - violating his Eighth Amendment rights.

BUFFALO — Lawyers for the shooter who killed 10 people at a Tops grocery store in 2022 have asked for a federal court order exempting him from the death penalty because he was 18 years old at the time of the racist mass shooting. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for juvenile offenders was unconstitutional. Since that ruling carved out an exemption for people under 18, the science of late-adolescent brain development has advanced markedly, according to the public defense lawyers for Payton Gendron.

The Constitutional Court announced that it is to hear a case on the constitutionality of the death penalty and has scheduled oral arguments on April 23, attracting widespread attention. However, instead of delving into the core debate of whether the death penalty contravenes the Constitution, legislators across party lines and the media have been preoccupied by arguing whether the grand justices should or should not make a ruling.

Last Friday, the Death Penalty Information Center issued its year-end report . The message is mixed. The report offered evidence of the substantial progress achieved by abolitionists during 2023 in their fight to end capital punishment in the United States. At the same time, it presented a bleak assessment of the Supreme Court’s current attitude toward the death penalty and documented the Court’s unwillingness to ensure fairness in capital cases.

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution protects us from “cruel and unusual punishment” by the government. This seemingly simple language raises a host of complicated questions. “Cruel” by what standard? “Unusual” in what sense? Does this provision have a fixed meaning? Or does its meaning change over time? History offers a few clues. In 1689, England adopted a Declaration of Rights that prohibited “cruel and unusual punishments.” Some of the Founders argued that we needed a similar provision in our own Bill of Rights.

A 2022 article in the Columbia Journal of Law & Social Problems presents both a historical overview of the practice of death-row confinement in the U.S. and the findings of a survey of the conditions on death rows in every jurisdiction with capital punishment in America.  Regarding the use of highly restrictive confinement, the author states that “the system of permanent solitary confinement on death row has neither the weight of history nor the support of the majority in either contemporary practice or social values.”

After a series of botched executions, the state is choosing a path of technical, rather than moral, innovation. Critics called 2022 “the year of the botched execution”—and it was indeed an infamous period, mainly because the state of Alabama lost the ability to competently kill prisoners in its charge while retaining the sovereignty to try.

Across this country, proponents of capital punishment are playing defense. They are doing so because the death penalty has been tarnished by mounting concerns about executing the innocent, by pervasive racial bias throughout the system, and by the prevalence of botched executions. The governing maxim for today’s death penalty is: familiarity breeds contempt. The more that people know about it, the less they support capital punishment. Last week National Public Radio (NPR) did a story that offered powerful new evidence of this fact. It reported on a series of interviews with “26 current and former workers who were collectively involved with more than 200 executions across 17 states and the federal death chamber. They were executioners, lawyers, correctional officers, prison spokespeople, wardens, corrections leaders, a researcher, a doctor, an engineer, a journalist and a nurse.” NPR found that their experience was enough “to shift many of their perspectives on capital punishment. No o...

The hearing will take place on Jan. 12 in Conway, South Carolina. GREENVILLE, S.C. — The South Carolina Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of the firing squad and electric chair as methods of capital punishment next year. The hearing will take place on Jan. 12 in Conway, South Carolina. Richland County Judge Jocelyn Newman ruled last week that the firing squad and electric chair are unconstitutional methods of capital punishment. In part, she ruled, "the General Assembly ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency." Gov. Henry McMaster's office said it will appeal a ruling. Justice 360, the group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of four death row inmates, said it was very pleased with the result and expected an appeal from South Carolina Department of Corrections and McMaster. His office told WYFF 4 this week that the office plans to file an appeal but did not give a timeline. An appeal would go t...

Korean Bishops’ Justice and Peace Committee has joined others in terming it unconstitutional and ineffective in curbing crimes Catholic Church in South Korea joined other religious groups to call for the abolition of the death penalty terming it unconstitutional and ineffective in curbing criminal offenses in the country. Korean Bishops’ Justice and Peace Committee made the appeal as the nation’s Constitutional Court holds the third hearing to debate whether the existing moratorium on the death penalty should be upheld or overturned in the East Asian nation. The committee had joined in a petition filed by a person who is accused of killing his parents in February 2019. The prosecution had demanded the death penalty, but the court [sentenced] the convicted person to life imprisonment, reported Dong-A Ilbo. The petitioners have appealed to the judges for the need to see the dignity and value of life in punishments meted out by the judicial system. "Life is an absolute value which ca...

They should equally consider the mitigating factors in favour of life imprisonment, says Bench. Do not prescribe death penalty with an eye only on the abhorrence of the crime, equally consider factors that can help the prisoner keep his life, the Supreme Court told judges across the country in a verdict on Wednesday. In a judgment which may become a significant precedent to the anti-death penalty cause, the apex court said trial judges should not be swayed in favour of death penalty merely because of the dreadful nature of the crime and its harmful impact on the society. They should equally consider the mitigating factors in favour of life imprisonment. The judgment by a 3-judge Bench led by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar came in the rape and murder of a seven-year-old. The court commuted the death penalty of the convict to life imprisonment. ‘Preservation of human life’ Justice Dinesh Maheshwari, who authored the judgment, referred to the evolution of the principles of penology. Justice Mahe...

Push to keep source of lethal injection drugs secret Along with lists of chemicals needed, and in what amounts, what happens inside the Florida State Prison during an execution is spelled out in a 14-page document. On page 5, it says "a designated execution team member will purchase, and at all times ensure a sufficient supply of the chemicals used in the lethal injection process." But it says nothing about where to get them. Watchdog groups say that's a problem. "Access to this information is critical to oversight of the Department of Corrections and lethal injections," explained Virginia Hamrick, the staff attorney at the Florida First Amendment Foundation. House Bill 873 and Senate Bill 1204 are moving through legislative committees, with bipartisan support, that would extend prohibitions against identifying anyone who prepares or injects the lethal injection drugs, any entity that participates in the drugs' production, and/or any entity or person who pro...

For those who want to see the end of the death penalty, there have been some troubling developments in 2021 50 years ago, the US Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia held that the death penalty as applied was “cruel and unusual” and therefore in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. The Court plurality found it inconsistent with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” The decision itself was a 1-page per curiam decision with a series of plurality opinions. Justice Douglas highlighted a long and shameful history of racial disparity in executions. Justice Stewart wrote that the death sentences were so arbitrary and random that they were “cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.” Justices Brennan and Marshall found the death penalty unconstitutional in all circumstances, citing the risk of mistaken execution of innocent people. For 4 years, no one was executed; in our bicentennial year,...

In a decision that advocates say could clear the state’s death row, the Oregon Supreme Court has overturned death-row prisoner David Ray Bartol’s death sentence because the crime he committed is no longer statutorily eligible for the death penalty. In 2019, the Oregon state legislature passed a new law that narrowly limits the crimes for which the death penalty may be imposed . The court on October 7, 2021 held without dissent that Bartol’s sentence violated the prohibition on “disproportionate punishments” contained in Article I, section 16 of the Oregon Constitution because his offense had been reclassified as non-capital. In her opinion for the court, Justice Rebecca Duncan wrote: “The enactment of SB 1013 [the new law] reflects a legislative determination that, regardless of when it was committed, the conduct that had constituted ‘aggravated murder’ does not fall within the narrow category of conduct for which the death penalty is appropriate. Given that determination, we conclude ...