Death Penalty News

The trial of a man who admitted to suffocating his estranged wife and her 2 young daughters with a plastic bag more than a decade ago began Monday morning with jury selection.  Sandwiched by his attorneys, Alberto Sierra, 42, sat in a navy blue sweater as dozens of prospective jurors shuffled into the largest courtroom in the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building in Miami.  In 2 weeks, hundreds of the jurors will be questioned on their thoughts about the death penalty.  The pool will be whittled down to a 12-person jury that will be tasked with deciding whether Sierra should be condemned to Florida’s death row or sentenced to life in prison. 

The former doctoral student pled guilty in 2025 to the murders of four University of Idaho students. A legal expert has called Bryan Kohberger’s attempt to abandon his guilty plea “highly unlikely” to succeed after the convicted killer filed a petition for post-conviction relief in an Idaho court. Kohberger pleaded guilty in 2025 to killing four University of Idaho students, waiving his right to a trial and avoiding a possible death penalty conviction. He received four life sentences in prison. On July 27, Kohberger filed a petition for post-conviction relief in the Ada County District Court. He looks to withdraw his guilty plea and conviction and seeks a trial on the murder charges.

If Bryan Kohberger successfully withdraws his guilty plea and goes to trial for the murders of four University of Idaho students, it could lead to him being sentenced to death, experts told Newsweek . Kohberger, 31, filed a handwritten petition on Monday from the Idaho Maximum Security Penitentiary, where he is serving four consecutive life sentences for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen in a rental home near the university's campus in Moscow, Idaho, in 2022. Kohberger pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbings just over a year ago, a month before jury selection was set to start.

Victims and family members condemned Boelter in court while honoring Mark and Melissa Hortman as brilliant, dedicated public servants. MINNEAPOLIS (CN) — A federal judge sentenced Vance Boelter to two consecutive life terms plus 40 years on Thursday for the targeted shootings and killings of Minnesota lawmakers last summer. Senior U.S. District Judge John Tunheim presided over the hearing in Minnesota federal court, where Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minnesota, faced final sentencing following his June guilty plea. The charges stem from last year’s killings of former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the shootings of state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

A man charged with the targeted killing of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband in what prosecutors described as an act of political violence has pleaded guilty, avoiding a potential death penalty under a plea deal. Vance Boelter said he shot and killed Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their Minnesota home last June. Boelter also admitted to shooting state lawmaker John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, in their home. The couple survived the attack. Boetler, 58, pleaded guilty to six counts, which include murder and stalking, and is expected to spend the rest of his life in prison.

DALLAS (AP) — A former FedEx driver was sentenced to death on Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to killing a 7-year-old girl he took from her Texas home while delivering a Christmas gift. Jurors in a Fort Worth courtroom decided on Tanner Horner's punishment after hearing about a month of testimony and evidence that included audio of Athena Strand's last moments from inside his delivery van. Horner, 34, pleaded guilty to capital murder last month in the 2022 killing just as his trial began. Athena's body was found two days after she was reported missing from her home in the rural town of Paradise, near Fort Worth.

Horner, 35, pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping The sentencing trial of former FedEx driver Tanner Horner enters its final week Monday in a Tarrant County courtroom in Fort Worth as jurors prepare to decide whether he will receive the death penalty or life in prison without parole for the 2022 kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Athena Strand. Horner, 35, pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated kidnapping on April 7, 2026, just as jury selection wrapped and testimony was set to begin. 

Jerome Anderson shot and killed Antoine Melvin, 42, John Burch, 65, and Patrick Lassiter, 35, in 2023. A man pleaded no contest to a triple-murder in Daytona Beach and was sentenced April 20 to three consecutive life terms in prison as part of a plea deal in which he avoided a possible death sentence. Jerome Anderson, 41, was indicted on three counts of first-degree murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon in the 2023 triple-slaying. Anderson pleaded no contest to the three first-degree murder charges April 20 and, in exchange, Assistant State Attorney Andrew Urbanak agreed not to continue to pursue the death penalty.

Tanner Horner apologised to Athena Strand's loved ones for 'taking their little angel away' in a two-page letter Athena Strand's killer penned a letter to her family apologising for 'taking their little angel away' - before chillingly claiming he 'wasn't the only one involved' in another addressed to investigators. Tanner Horner, 34, confessed to abducting and murdering the seven-year-old on 30 November, 2022, after delivering a parcel to her dad's home in Paradise, Texas. Jurors - who were left in tears after listening to distressing audio of the little girl's final moments last week - must now decide if the former FedEx driver should face the death penalty or life in prison.

FORT WORTH, Texas — Tanner Lynn Horner, a former contract delivery driver for FedEx, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the 2022 capital murder and aggravated kidnapping of 7-year-old Athena Strand, a move that abruptly shifted the proceedings into a high-stakes punishment phase where jurors will decide between life imprisonment and the death penalty. Horner, 34, entered the plea in a Tarrant County courtroom as his trial was set to begin. The case was moved to Fort Worth from neighboring Wise County last year after defense attorneys argued that pretrial publicity would prevent a fair trial in the community where the girl disappeared.

An Arkansas man was released from prison Friday after serving more than three decades for a murder he said he did not commit. Charlie Vaughn had been incarcerated since 1991 for the 1988 murder, rape, and burglary of 81-year-old Myrtle Holmes.  DNA testing conducted in 1989 had excluded Vaughn as the source of the sexual assault, but he was charged anyway and later pleaded guilty to first-degree murder to avoid the death penalty, despite no physical evidence linking him to the crime.

Tetsuya Yamagami, the 45-year-old man who assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8, 2022, has consistently stated that his motive was rooted in deep-seated resentment toward the Unification Church (now known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, often called the "Moonies").  He blamed the church for destroying his family through coercive financial donations and emotional manipulation, and he targeted Abe as a prominent political figure he viewed as a key enabler of the church's influence in Japan due to longstanding ties with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). 

The gunman accused of killing Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pled guilty Tuesday, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a country with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. "Everything is true," Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting murder of the country's longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials.

Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against a Tennessee man charged with killing the parents, grandmother and uncle of an infant found abandoned in a home’s front yard TIPTONVILLE, Tenn. -- Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against a Tennessee man charged with killing the parents, grandmother and uncle of an infant found abandoned in a home's front yard on Thursday. Austin Robert Drummond, 28, appeared by a video feed from jail before a judge in Tiptonville, two days after he was arrested in the killings that set the mostly rural region of western Tennessee on edge.

Eight defense attorneys who represented the man who killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 were paid $745,000 to defend him against federal hate crimes and weapons charges, according to a document filed in federal court this week.  Patrick Crusius, who will turn 27 later this month, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in El Paso in 2023 to 45 counts of committing hate crimes and 45 counts of using a firearm to kill or commit violence. He pleaded guilty after the U.S. Justice Department decided not to seek the death penalty, and he was sentenced by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama to 90 consecutive life terms in prison. 

El Paso County taxpayers paid almost $4 million for the defense and $1.9 million for the prosecution of the man who gunned down 23 people and wounded 22 others at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, county records show. More than $2 million of that went to experts hired since 2019 by the defense team representing Patrick Crusius, now 26, who pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon last month after District Attorney James Montoya decided not to seek the death penalty . The gunman, who said he attacked the Cielo Vista Walmart in August 2019 to stop “the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

Patrick Crusius, who has admitted to killing 23 people and wounding 22 others in a racist mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart in 2019, will no longer face the death penalty, El Paso Matters has learned. District Attorney James Montoya, who took office on Jan. 1, called family members of those killed on Monday to inform them he wouldn’t seek the death penalty in the Aug. 3, 2019, mass shooting, multiple family members told El Paso Matters. The family members asked not to be identified because of a gag order in place since 2022 that prohibited lawyers and potential witnesses from discussing the case with the media.

WASHINGTON — An appeals court in Washington on Thursday temporarily halted a deal between the alleged mastermind of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks, as well as other co-defendants, and the US Department of Justice at the request of the Biden administration, reported German news agency dpa. The court issued a temporary stay – a provisional suspension of the proceedings – which pauses all steps related to the proposed agreement until a final decision is made.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke for the first time Tuesday on his decision to throw out a plea deal for the men accused in al-Qaida’s 2001 attacks, saying that the depth of American losses and sacrifice on 9/11 demand that the military commission trial goes ahead.  “This wasn’t a decision that I took lightly,” Austin told reporters at an event with Australian officials in Annapolis, Maryland. “But I have long believed that the families of the victims, our service members, and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commissions, commission trials carried out” in the 9/11 case, he said.

CLERMONT COUNTY, Ohio (WKRC) - A heart-wrenching 911 call was played at a press conference in Clermont County on Monday to help explain to the public what led up to the moment a man shot and killed his three little boys . The mother of the boys first went to call 911 because she thought that when her husband, Chad Doerman, picked up a rifle, he was suicidal.