Death Penalty News

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Attorneys and death penalty advocates this week called on Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt all executions in the state after what they described as a “botched” execution attempt that left death row prisoner Tony Carruthers physically and emotionally traumatized following more than 90 minutes of failed attempts to establish IV access. At a press conference in Nashville, attorneys representing Carruthers and plaintiffs challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol said the state’s execution procedures are deeply flawed, inadequately reviewed and incapable of ensuring constitutional executions. The attorneys argued that what happened to Carruthers on May 22 was foreseeable and directly tied to deficiencies already identified in ongoing litigation challenging Tennessee’s 2025 lethal injection protocol.

Lance Shockley died by lethal injection last year. State courts have rejected prisoners’ requests for DNA testing in recent years. Lance Shockley, a man on death row in Missouri, wanted items from the crime scene to undergo DNA testing to potentially prove his innocence. The court scheduled proceedings on his request — but the date set was for two days after his execution. Patty Prewitt can’t have her DNA tested — and fully clear her name — because her sentence was commuted and she is no longer in prison. And others, including Lamar McVay, who is serving 30 years for a robbery, can’t even get an answer from the state on his DNA testing request. He's still awaiting a ruling on a motion he filed in September 2022.

Senate bill would replace capital punishment with life without parole  Two Kentucky state senators have introduced legislation that would eliminate the death penalty in the commonwealth, replacing it with mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole or probation.  Senate Bill 350 was introduced by Senators Gerald Neal and Stephen Meredith. Neal, a Louisville Democrat, said he has been advocating for the measure since 2012. “Basically, it substitutes life without parole as opposed to the death penalty itself,” Neal said.

Jimmie Christian Duncan learned in April 2025 that a Louisiana judge had dismissed his capital murder conviction and he would no longer face the prospect of execution. In 1998, a jury convicted Duncan of murdering his girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter, and he had been on death row ever since. Louisiana has a long and troubled death penalty history. From 1976 to 2015, 80% of the state’s capital sentences were reversed on appeal, and 12 people have been exonerated from its death row. But the Bayou State is not the only death penalty state with a wrongful conviction problem. Death row exonerations – when someone is released after being sentenced – have become more common in the United States . More than 200 people have been freed in the past half-century.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Feb. 24 in the case of a man on Texas death row who has long tried to obtain postconviction DNA testing on evidence that he says would exonerate him.  Ruben Gutierrez was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in Brownsville, Tex. Gutierrez has maintained his innocence and says DNA from several pieces of evidence — such as a hair and nail scrapings from Harrison’s finger and blood stains — would show that he was never in Harrison’s home. And if the DNA evidence shows that he never entered Harrison’s home, he contends, the jury would not have sentenced him to death. 

As scientific and technological progress continues, many prisoners may benefit from these advancements. However, many legal procedural barriers continue to block prisoners from accessing DNA evidence that has the potential to exonerate them. Death-sentenced prisoners with credible evidence of innocence have gained significant attention this month with the execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, the near-execution of Robert Roberson in Texas, and the U.S. Supreme Court arguments in Glossip v. Oklahoma . There is a common misconception that DNA evidence is widely available in all cases and central to exonerations, but the reality is that DNA exonerations in death penalty cases are relatively rare.

Hours after Taberon Honie was executed by lethal injection, a former Utah lawmaker who tried but failed to repeal the death penalty said an eventual repeal is "not if, but when." Lowry Snow, an attorney who served as a Republican state representative from Washington County, introduced HB 147 two years ago to hike prison time for aggravated murder, but get rid of the death penalty.

Marcellus Williams has been sentenced to death, despite prosecutors saying he is innocent A man who has been sentenced to death in Missouri is not guilty of the crimes he is being sentenced for, prosecutors have said. Marcellus Williams has now had his execution date set, despite the people who are prosecuting him insisting that he is innocent.

On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

The proposed legal changes to clarify whether death row prisoners can file last-minute applications after exhausting all other avenues were welcomed by members of the legal fraternity, with several lawyers saying that the moves will make post-appeal processes more efficient without infringing on prisoners' rights. But a few lawyers disagreed, raising concerns that the proposals, if passed, would set too high a bar for cases where a human life is at stake. Some were also concerned that they could turn more lawyers away from picking up such death row cases on a pro bono basis, hence limiting legal access for this group. Speaking to TODAY on the Post-Appeal Applications in Capital Cases Bill that was tabled by the Law Ministry on Monday (Nov 7), six lawyers said that it would make the process of post-appeal applications clearer if passed. Such applications could involve stays of execution or judicial reviews that challenge the President’s decision to not grant clemency. RELATED |  Ne...

Anthony Apanovitch is an innocent man, and the state of Ohio knows it. But it plans to execute him anyway. Apanovitch is on death row even though DNA evidence conclusively proves that he did not commit the crime for which he has been sentenced to die. He is there because of a shocking combination of prosecutorial misconduct and the desire of some supporters of capital punishment to achieve finality in death cases even if it comes at the expense of justice . This almost unimaginable situation defies any semblance of justice and simple fairness. Executing the innocent is an American nightmare. It is a nightmare that Apanovitch is living. The state of Ohio needs to end that nightmare and make sure that it doesn’t commit a state-sanctioned murder. Capital sentencing has proven to be unreliable not just in Ohio but wherever the death penalty is used in this country. Over the last fifty years, 190 people have been exonerated and released from death row . Twenty-one of those exonerations resu...

”The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.” A hard lesson that law students learn in criminal procedure classes is the difference between factual guilt and legal guilt . Factual guilt refers to what someone actually did. Legal guilt refers to what the prosecution can prove in accordance with law’s distinctive presumptions and burdens of proof. Being factually innocent is no guarantee of what juries and judges will decide as they apply those presumptions and burdens. Convicting the innocent is always tragic, but never more so than in death penalty cases. We know that 187 people have been wrongly convicted in capital cases and ultimately exonerated since 1973. And there is little doubt that innocent people have been executed in this country. On Monday, May 23, in Shinn v. Ramirez , the Supreme Court increased the chances that still more innocent people will be executed. In that case, the now-dominant six-Justice conservative majo...