Death Penalty News

Brenda Andrew, a woman on Oklahoma’s death row, filed a petition April 27, 2026, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit to reconsider her case, arguing that prosecutors relied on “rampant gender bias” during her trial and violated her constitutional right to a fair proceeding.  In January 2025, “the U.S. Supreme Court, in a per curiam decision, remanded the case for consideration of whether the state’s gendered evidence was so unduly prejudicial that it rendered her trial fundamentally unfair and unconstitutional.” 

The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity began Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man faces charges that he killed a Black transgender woman by shooting her three times in the head COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity began Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man faces charges that he killed a Black transgender woman and then fled to New York. 

For a country that executes gay people, it offers a surprising procedure. But those going through it face unqualified doctors and humiliation. Death or surgery? It’s a capital offence to be gay in Iran. But gender-change surgery is legal. Now, 4000 Iranians are undergoing the life-changing procedure every year. And many of them are juveniles. The plight of Iran’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) was brought back to the attention of the world after the belated arrest of a provincial “morality police” chief last month after video of him engaging in homosexual acts began circulating on social media. Seven of his sexual partners were arrested immediately. Then, after six months of public outrage, Reza Seghati, the director general of the Office of the Ministry of Culture in Iran’s Gilan province, was detained. Seghati was just one of a half-dozen similar exposes in the past year involving senior members of Iran’s clerical religious ruling class. RELATED |  Iran’s governm...

Vatican releases Catholic directory for catechesis in ‘dynamic continuity’ with Church teaching About the death penalty, the directory emphasizes the “intrinsic and inalienable dignity” of every human person, and references the teaching of recent popes, especially Pope Francis’ 2018 change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church which declared the death penalty “inadmissible.”  The Vatican Thursday published a new directory for catechesis, emphasizing both its continuity with two previous directories and its new content on contemporary issues such as sex and gender and medical advancements. “The new Directory for Catechesis offers the fundamental theological-pastoral principles and some general orientations which are relevant for the practice of catechesis in our time,” Archbishop Rino Fisichella wrote in the introduction to the directory. The directory was released in Italian June 25. It will be published in the major global languages. Fisichella is presiden...

In the darkness of an execution chamber in the Walls Unit in Huntsville one night last month a moment of clarity shone through. As inmate Chris Young died at the hands of the state on July 17, one thing, even in that dimly lit observation room bordering the actual execution chamber, was blazingly clear. Mercy in Texas exists only for the few, the privileged, the white and the wealthy. The truth is that the process of clemency in Texas is so random and isolated that it effectively does not exist. Pardon and commutation exist only if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles executive clemency section votes to recommend relief to the governor, and the governor agrees. No one knows what rules board members follow because they are not published. No one knows what things move the board or fail to move it because it issues no opinions or statements. It keeps no records. It does not even publish minutes of members' discussions or debates. It has nothing to say to the world whe...

The justices on Tuesday will consider whether to hear a case questioning if the Alabama Supreme Court failed to follow the high court's precedent prohibiting race- and gender-based discrimination in jury selection. The Supreme Court will consider a petition from Alabama on Tuesday featuring the death penalty, discrimination, and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice and controversial Senate candidate Roy Moore. At Tuesday's conference, the justices will consider whether to hear Floyd v. Alabama , a case questioning if the Alabama Supreme Court failed to follow the high court's precedent prohibiting race- and gender-based discrimination in jury selection. Christopher Floyd was convicted in 2005 of killing Waylon Crawford during a robbery in 1992.  Crawford's killing went unsolved for more than 12 years, following a lack of witnesses and physical evidence found at the crime scene, as Floyd's attorneys note in their petition to the high court. A...

The majority of citizens in the United States still support the death penalty, but the amount of people who support the punishment has decreased in past years, according to research studied by University of Nebraska professors. Criminology and criminal justice professor Amy Anderson from the University of Nebraska Omaha and professor of sociology Philip Schwadel from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln  worked together to analyze the demographics of people who support the death penalty and to find out why the amount of support has changed. The professors looked over data collected in the past decades by the General Social Survey. They discovered the demographics of a person can influence their opinion. Crime rates also affect whether a person supports the death penalty. In the 1980s and 1990s during the American crack epidemic more people supported the death penalty, according to the data analyzed. Additionally, research showed an individual’s religion, political ...

Ohio's 53 executions shown "vast inequities" in racial, gender and geography, a new study concludes. Research by Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina political science professor, are not a revelation to those familiar with Ohio's death penalty, which resumed in 1999 after a 36-year hiatus. But it does underline a consistent pattern that has been pointed out in state, national and media reports for years. Baumgartner looked at Ohio's 53 executions between 1999 and 2014, finding "significant and troubling racial, gender, and geographic disparities with regards to who is executed in Ohio." Baumgartner concluded that the victim's race and gender, and the county where the murder occurred, influenced whether or not the killer was executed. "The most concerning finding is that these racial and geographic disparities are quite significant, and they demonstrate that Ohio's death penalty is plagued by vast inequities which ...