Death Penalty News

ATLANTA, Ga. — The man accused of stabbing and killing a 66-year-old woman on a MARTA train last Saturday has caught the attention of federal prosecutors. John Elijah Matthews, 25, faces a federal charge of committing an act of violence causing death on a mass transportation station, the District Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said on Tuesday. He was also charged with murder in Fulton County.

A 24-year-old man faces the possibility of life in prison after a federal grand jury indicted him for the murder of a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in Decatur. A federal grand jury has returned a two-count indictment against 24-year-old Nahjel Malik Williams in connection with the February shooting death of a United States Postal Service employee.  Williams, a resident of Decatur, faces charges of first-degree murder of a federal employee and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence resulting in death. The indictment follows an investigation into the Feb. 12 killing of Dequavious Graves. Graves was performing his official duties as a letter carrier in Decatur when the incident occurred. Premeditation Graves, 31, was shot and killed in the 2700 block of Oxford Drive near Flat Shoals Road just before 7 p.m. while performing his job. Federal prosecutors allege the killing of the letter carrier was planned in advance. At the time Graves was killed, Williams was already wan...

In his complaint, Michael Wade Nance said his veins were so severely compromised that they were likely to blow and cause him to suffer “excruciating pain” during the execution. ATLANTA (CN) — A panel for the 11th Circuit on Thursday upheld a judge’s ruling against a death row inmate who sought an execution by a firing squad instead of lethal injection. The decision paves the way for the state’s long-awaited execution of Michael Wade Nance, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death over 25 years ago. In a unanimous opinion, the circuit judges agreed with a federal judge’s conclusion that Nance failed to prove lethal injection was likely to cause him an unconstitutional level of pain or discomfort.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in two separate Georgia criminal cases. One involves the killing of a Gwinnett County police officer and another is over the death of a 4-year-old girl in Hall County . Kevin Andrews is charged in the death of 25-year-old Gwinnett County Police Officer Pradeep Tamang, who was shot and killed while investigating a credit card fraud case. Authorities said Andrews had an outstanding warrant and shot at officers without warning. Another officer, David Reed, was seriously injured.

GAINESVILLE, Ga. — Prosecutors in Hall County are seeking the death penalty against a woman accused of the brutal killing of a 4-year-old girl whose body was found in a parked car last fall. In a court filing Monday, the State announced its intent to pursue capital punishment for Jessica Motes, who faces a litany of charges including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, and first-degree cruelty to children. The case began on Oct. 26, 2025, when authorities discovered the body of 4-year-old Autumn Fox. The child’s remains were found inside the trunk of a vehicle parked at a Sam’s Club in Oakwood, approximately 50 miles northeast of Atlanta.

The execution of a Georgia man scheduled for Wednesday has been suspended as the State Board of Pardons and Paroles considers a clemency application.  Stacey Humphreys, 52, would have been the state's first execution in 2025. As of December 16, 2025, Georgia has carried out zero executions in 2025. The state last executed an inmate in January 2020, followed by a pause due to COVID-19. Executions resumed in 2024, but none have occurred this year until now. Humphreys had been sentenced to death for the 2003 killings of 33-year-old Cyndi Williams and 21-year-old Lori Brown, who were fatally shot at the real estate office where they worked.

Executions in the U.S. nearly doubled in 2025 over the previous year as Florida executed more prisoners in a 12-month span than ever before, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The organization, which tracks capital punishment, released its year-end report on Monday. It showed a complicated picture: although public support for the death penalty remained at a low point, executions ticked upward. "These trends show there is a real disconnect between what the American public wants and what elected officials are doing with the death penalty," said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI). The group does not take a position on the death penalty itself but is critical of how it has been applied.

The three white men were found guilty of murdering the 25-year-old Black man after chasing him in their trucks through a Georgia neighborhood. ATLANTA (CN) — The 11th Circuit on Friday upheld the convictions of the three white men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery five years ago after chasing the 25-year-old Black man down the streets of a Georgia subdivision. In a split opinion, the circuit judges ruled that sufficient evidence supported their convictions.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to review the case of Stacey Humphreys , who was sentenced to death in Georgia after a single juror “bullied” the others into voting for death. In an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson , Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the Court’s decision “allowing a death sentence tainted by a single juror’s extraordinary misconduct to stand.” Stacey Humphreys was charged with killing two women inside a model home after forcing them to undress and robbing them at gunpoint.

Virginia and Georgia legislators discuss financial implications, appeals process and more Capital punishment continues to be a contentious issue in the United States, where each state has the autonomy to determine which crimes warrant the death penalty. Among the 27 states with capital punishment laws, premeditated murder and murder with aggravating circumstances are commonly deemed capital crimes.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — It was the hottest September in more than a century in parts of South Florida, and Dwayne Wilson could hear his 81-year-old fellow inmate gasping for breath and crying out for help at the Dade Correctional Institution, 45 miles southwest of Miami on the edge of the Florida Everglades. The elderly man was confined to a wheelchair and for weeks had been complaining of severe chest pain and difficulty breathing in the unventilated dorm where he was serving his sentence, according to a federal class action lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Wilson and two other inmates at the prison.

One day Alabama will conduct its final execution. The witnesses present won’t know that, of course. If capital punishment disappears, it will be by law or ruling that comes after these men and women gather in the small, tomb-like room at Atmore Correctional Facility.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Attorneys for a Georgia inmate sent to death row 25 years ago are accusing a prosecutor of hiding a deal that they contend casts doubt on the credibility of a crucial trial witness. Warren King was sentenced to death in September 1998 after an Appling County jury convicted him of murdering Karen Crosby, a convenience store clerk who was fatally shot during an armed robbery in southeast Georgia.

Willie James Pye was put to death by lethal injection in the state’s first execution in over four years last week. Pye was pronounced dead at 11:03 p.m. March 20 at the state prison in Jackson after being convicted for a 1993 kidnapping, rape and murder of his former girlfriend. But despite the case’s significance and national attention over Pye, the public’s view of the execution itself was restricted under state protocol blocking media witnesses for state executions from critical parts of the process. 

Georgia carries out first execution in more than 4 years A Georgia man convicted of killing his former girlfriend 3 decades ago has been put to death in the state's first execution in more than 4 years. Authorities say 59-year-old Willie James Pye was pronounced dead at 11:03 p.m. Wednesday evening following an injection of the sedative pentobarbital. Pye was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 abduction, rape and shooting death of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough.

Pye was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 killing of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. ATLANTA — A Georgia man should not be executed because he is intellectually disabled and feels remorse for killing his former girlfriend three decades ago, his lawyers wrote in seeking clemency for him.

Three years after four women of Asian descent were shot and killed at spas in Fulton County, it remains unclear when the suspect will face his death penalty trial. Robert Aaron Long pleaded guilty to killing four people at Young’s Asian Massage in Cherokee County on March 16, 2021 and was given a life sentence without parole for each one. However, the now-24-year-old pleaded not guilty in Fulton County, where District Attorney Fani Willis is pursuing the death penalty and hate crime charges.

Georgia plans to put Willie James Pye to death on March 20, in the state’s first execution since January 2020. The state wants to hide as much of that event as possible and, in so doing, to push the limits of execution secrecy in this country. Its plan is a bold departure from the history of American executions. In that history, the public and the press traditionally have been welcomed as spectators. Secrecy of the kind that Georgia law now allows rightly invites suspicion. What is it that Georgia doesn’t want the press to witness and the public to know, and why does it want to restrict what the press can see and hear when it puts Pye to death?

An execution scheduled for next week would be the first in Georgia in more than four years. The state is trying to move past an agreement made amid the coronavirus pandemic that effectively halted lethal injections. Willie James Pye, 59, is set to be put to death March 20. He was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 killing of his former girlfriend, Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. Georgia last carried out an execution in January 2020. In April 2021, the state attorney general's office entered into an agreement with attorneys for death row prisoners to suspend executions for a certain group of prisoners and to establish conditions under which they could resume.

ATLANTA — A man who killed his former girlfriend three decades ago is set to be put to death in March in what would be Georgia's first execution in more than four years. A judge on Thursday signed the order for the execution of Willie James Pye, who was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 killing of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough.  The execution is scheduled for March 20 at 7 p.m., after the judge set an execution window between noon that day and noon on March 27.