Death Penalty News

Most of planet Earth stopped carrying out executions long ago. Some of the few nations that still do so are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia — and the United States of America. Yet even here, most states have stopped killing their own people by either law or practice. Only five states have done so this year, according to new numbers from the Death Penalty Information Center. Florida is one of them. Our colleagues in killing are Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

In 1994, public approval for capital punishment was around 80 %. Today it's below 50 %. Maurice Chammah’s “ Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalt y” is a work of non-fiction, which bears stating because every so often a character passes through the book almost as caricature, outfitted with a Stetson, a handlebar mustache and a powerful persuasion with colorfully articulated straight-shooter notions about the value of frontier justice. A staff writer for “The Marshall Project,” Chammah spent years researching and conducting interviews for “ Let the Lord Sort Them ” resulting in a dark and complicated history that touches on life and death, processes and politics, myth and fact, crime and punishment. The book also shows the sharp evolution of public opinion. In 1994, public approval for capital punishment was around 80 %. Today it’s below 50 %. “There has definitely been a sea change over the past 25 years,” Chammah says. “Not that long ago people who opposed ...

Attorneys for Pervis Payne petitioned Governor Bill Lee for clemency today on grounds that, as a person with intellectual disability, Payne’s execution would be unconstitutional. A growing number of 150 Tennessee faith, legal, civic, and grassroots supporters also submitted letters asking the governor for mercy. Payne’s attorneys also argue that racism contributed to his wrongful conviction and death sentence. His execution is scheduled for Dec. 3. Over 120 congregations from multiple faiths in Tennessee wrote Governor Lee saying, “[T]he judicial and legislative branches of the Tennessee government have abdicated any responsibility for ensuring Mr. Payne is not unconstitutionally executed. That leaves you, and you alone, with the power to prevent this miscarriage of justice by granting clemency to Pervis Payne.” More than 1 dozen churches held a Day of Prayer for Payne yesterday. The application for executive clemency includes some of the following statements on Payne’s behalf: “[Y]ou...

I know that California’s death penalty system is plagued by racial bias. I know it, not only because of the solid data and multiple research studies that have documented it, but also because I lived it myself. I was sent to San Quentin’s death row for a crime I did not commit. It took me five long years to prove my innocence and win my freedom, but if the state of California had had its way, I would not be alive today. The case against me was based entirely on false accusations and circumstantial evidence. But in California, and in all death penalty states, a black person accused of killing a white person is exponentially more likely to be convicted and sentenced to death. This is the result of implicit racial bias, and in some cases overt racism, on the part of judges, attorneys and juries. In my case, the district attorney systematically excluded all African-American jurors and the judge allowed it. California has the largest death row in the country and 67 percent of the ...

A new book explores the slow demise of the ultimate punishment. There are 4 men left on death row in Virginia, and only 31 people were sentenced to death in the entire U.S. last year, compared with more than 300 per year in the mid-1990s. The numbers are stark, but if you ask the experts - lawyers, scholars, activists, judges - why the death penalty has begun to fade in the U.S., you get all sorts of answers, many of them frustratingly vague. The crime rate dropped, so there have been fewer murders to punish. A few states abolished the punishment outright. The cost of death penalty cases went up, and prosecutors grew worried about their budgets. States passed laws making life without parole an option for certain aggravated murders, meaning there was a sufficiently harsh alternative to the death penalty. All those DNA exonerations raised the specter of an innocent person being killed. In elections for district attorney, voters in Houston and Philadelphia replaced death-penalt...

10:31 p.m.: The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution tonight to condemned killer Keith Tharpe, three and a half hours after he was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection. In a 6-3 decision, the court’s justices were apparently concerned about claims that one of Tharpe’s jurors was racist and sentenced Tharpe to death because he was African-American. Three justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — dissented. The high court will now decide whether to hear Tharpe’s appeal, and, if it doesn’t, the court said the stay of execution shall terminate automatically. But that will not happen tonight. Tharpe’s lawyers were overjoyed with the decision. “We’re gratified the court understands this case merits thoughtful consideration outside the press of an execution warrant,” said Brian Kammer, one of Tharpe’s attorneys. “We are extremely thankful that the court has seen fit to consider Mr. Tharpe's claim of juror racial bias in regula...

Keith Leroy Tharpe, 59, was convicted of killing by jury that included man who said in 1998 affidavit that he wondered if black people ‘even have souls’ A Georgia prisoner whose jury trial was marred by racial bias was set to be executed on Tuesday night, barring an eleventh-hour intervention by the state or the US supreme court. Keith Leroy Tharpe, 59, lost his bid for clemency on Monday before the state board of pardons and parole. He was convicted in 1991 of the shooting death of his sister-in-law, Jacquelyn Freeman, in September 1990. One of the points Tharpe’s attorneys asked the state board to consider was that a juror in the case, Barney Gattie, who has since died, said in an affidavit signed in May 1998: “After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls.” Gattie allegedly freely used racial slurs and in the affidavit said Freeman came from a family of “nice black folks”. Tharpe, he said, “wasn’t in the ‘good’ black folks category in m...

“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” This single, sinister question, asked over a sepulchral-sounding musical score, was rhetorical; for after a dramatic pause and a malevolent cackle, the narrator smugly informed the audience: “The Shadow knows.” And so it was with this somber admonition on September 26, 1937, that the gritty, crime-fighting character dubbed “The Shadow,” whose exploits had previously been limited to pulp fiction magazines, burst into American consciousness with his own radio program. The uber-successful first episode called “The Death House Rescue” would lead to a run of 664 more installments over 18 seasons. Exactly 80 years later another story about a scheduled execution, this time one that is all too real, is playing out; but, unlike that first episode of “The Shadow,” there is little chance of a tidy and fair resolution (much less “a death house rescue”). Indeed, absent an unlikely intervention, the state of Georgia will execute death row ...

Only a unanimous jury can convict and impose a death sentence in Georgia, and the law has long recognized that misconduct by a single juror requires reversal. In 1991, a jury in Jones County, Georgia, sentenced Keith Tharpe, a Black man, to death for the murder of his sister-in-law. Seven years later, Tharpe’s defense counsel met with a white juror on Tharpe’s trial as part of their routine investigation of the case. The juror explained to the lawyers why he voted for his client’s death, and then reviewed, edited, and signed a sworn statement, which set out his views of race and Tharpe: I have observed there are two types of Black people: 1. Black folks and 2. Niggers. For example, some of them who hang around our little store act up and carry on. I tell them, “nigger, you better straighten up or get out of here fast.” I felt Tharpe who wasn’t in the “good” black folks category in my book, should get the electric chair for what he did. . . . After studying the Bible, I have wond...

Regardless of how one might feel about the death penalty, no one should be more or less culpable because of the color of their skin. I am the executive director of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. From my childhood in the Arkansas Delta, to higher education in Walmart-dominated Northwest Arkansas, to New York and Los Angeles as a model and television personality, and finally to Little Rock, Arkansas, where I attended law school and currently live and work. Justice in the Arkansas Delta is different from justice in Fayetteville. Racial disparity is part of the culture in Arkansas. See Little Rock Central High School. See the Robert E. Lee/Martin Luther King Jr. joint holidays. And the racial disparity in the Arkansas criminal justice system is one of the most alarming manifestations of this inequitable treatment. In Arkansas, African-Americans make up roughly 17 % of the population, but African-Americans account for a whopping 42.2 % of the prison popu...