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. 

Two for­mer California death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, Ernest Dykes and Curtis Ervin , have filed law­suits against Alameda County, accus­ing the District Attorney’s office of ​“set[ting] out to rig the juries” in their cap­i­tal cas­es. Both men were released from prison after their death sen­tences were reduced because of the dis­cov­ery of uncon­sti­tu­tion­al pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct dur­ing each of their jury selec­tions in the 1990s. The law­suits allege that the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office (ACDAO) had a long-stand­ing prac­tice of engag­ing in racial dis­crim­i­na­tion dur­ing jury selec­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es. ​“The evi­dence shows that the errors were com­mit­ted know­ing­ly and not in iso­la­tion, but rather, borne from the prod­uct of a pat­tern and prac­tice rein­forced by those with super­vi­so­ry author­i­ty with­in the ACDAO,” the suits state. Both law­suits accuse the ACDAO of vio­lat­ing the men’s right to a fair tri­al by uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly...

Jury selection is set to begin Monday in the federal death penalty trial of Payton Gendron, who is already serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in state court to carrying out the racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022 that killed 10 Black people and injured three others. The upcoming proceedings relate to separate federal charges, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and jurors could ultimately decide whether Gendron is executed or remains in prison for life. Here are three key takeaways as the next phase of proceedings gets underway:

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a Mississippi man’s conviction and death sentence. By a vote of 5-4, the court in Pitchford v. Cain agreed with Terry Pitchford that the judge at his 2006 trial had not properly analyzed whether the prosecutor in Pitchford’s case violated the Constitution’s ban on racial discrimination in jury selection. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, in a nine-page opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Quoting a 2019 opinion in which the court threw out the conviction of Mississippi inmate Curtis Flowers in a case that involved the same prosecutor, Kavanaugh acknowledged that “‘America’s trial judges operate at the front lines of American justice’ and ‘the job of enforcing’” the Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky , holding that the use of peremptory challenges (that is, challenges for any reason) to remove potential jurors based on race violates the ...

A March 9, 2026, com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing for Andre Thomas, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Texas, has been post­poned to an unspec­i­fied date because of con­cerns that Mr. Thomas is too men­tal­ly ill to be trans­port­ed to his com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing and he could not be re-exam­ined by the State’s expert. Mr. Thomas was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in April 2023; how­ev­er, his exe­cu­tion date was with­drawn in March 2023 , cit­ing con­cerns with his severe men­tal ill­ness (SMI) and com­pe­ten­cy to face execution.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The fate of the man who shot and killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket in May 2022 will be determined in the city where the tragedy occurred. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo on Tuesday denied a motion to move the federal death penalty trial for Payton Gendron to Rochester.  Attorneys for Gendron had sought the change of venue, arguing the court would be unable to seat a fair and impartial jury due to "pervasive news coverage" in the Buffalo area.

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for a new trial for one of Alabama’s longest-serving people on death row after declining to review a lower court ruling that prosecutors violated his constitutional rights by intentionally rejecting Black jurors.  According to an article written by the Associated Press, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in Alabama might receive a new trial after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that prosecutors had violated his rights by intentionally rejecting Black jurors.  According to the article, on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This decision paved the way for Michael Sockwell, the 63-year-old death row inmate, to receive a new trial.

Cedric Ricks is set to be killed on March 11 Cedric Ricks spoke in his own defense at his 2013 murder trial, something most defendants accused of a terrible crime do not do. Ricks confessed that he had killed his girlfriend, Roxann Sanchez, and her 8-year-old son. He admitted he was aggressive and had trouble controlling his anger, stating that he was “sorry about everything.” The Tarrant County jury was unmoved. Ricks has spent the last 13 years on death row and is scheduled to be executed on March 11.

More than two decades after Laci Peterson vanished from her Modesto, California, home, the murder case that captivated the nation continues to draw legal challenges, public debate and renewed attention. As the year comes to a close, Scott Peterson, convicted in 2004 of murdering his pregnant wife and their unborn son Conner, remains behind bars, serving life without the possibility of parole. His wife disappeared on Christmas Eve in 2002, and a few months later, the remains of Laci and Conner were found in the San Francisco Bay.

Juries in recent years have failed to agree on the death penalty in some gruesome cases, including mass killings at a Parkland, Florida high school and an Aurora, Colorado movie theater. Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray has announced that he is seeking the death penalty for Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk. This decision significantly raises the stakes for prosecutors. While they believe they have a strong case to prove Robinson's guilt, a death sentence is far from guaranteed. To secure it, prosecutors must convince every member of a 12-person jury to unanimously agree that the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for the crime.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The Alabama man accused of killing 18 people in 2023 and 2024, including two mass shootings, will go to trial in April next year, a judge ruled Tuesday. But his attorneys have raised concerns about whether it will be possible to select impartial jurors from a city still reeling from record levels of violence last year. Damien McDaniel, 22, faces murder charges related to 18 deaths in Birmingham, Alabama — including eight people killed at two separate mass shootings in July and September. Jefferson County District Judge Shanta Owens also ruled that prosecutors could pursue the death penalty against McDaniel under Alabama law.

LA Innocence Project says it will refile its case in Redwood City courthouse, believing new evidence "exonerates" him Scott Peterson’s hope that the California Court of Appeal would overturn his murder conviction were dashed this week when it instead directed his lawyers to return their case to the same Redwood City courthouse where he has had no luck over the past two decades convincing a jury or a string of judges he is innocent of killing his pregnant wife Laci and unborn son two decades ago. The Los Angeles Innocence Project, which took on the notorious case more than a year ago, had asserted in an 847-page petition that it had uncovered evidence that would “eviscerate” the prosecution’s original case and exonerate the former Modesto fertilizer salesman, including new witnesses who say they saw Laci walking her dog at a time prosecutors say she was already dead.

In a rare ruling with broad implications for jury deliberations and the death penalty in California, the California Supreme Court on April 3, 2025, reversed the murder convictions and death sentence of Timothy Joseph McGhee, a reputed gang leader convicted of multiple homicides and attempted murders in Los Angeles. Writing for a unanimous court in People v. McGhee (S169750), Justice Goodwin Liu found that the trial court had committed a “clear abuse of discretion” by improperly removing a dissenting juror during guilt-phase deliberations, undermining the defendant’s constitutional right to a unanimous jury.

South Carolina executes Richard Moore despite broadly supported plea to cut sentence to life   South Carolina put Richard Moore to death by lethal injection Friday for the 1999 fatal shooting of a convenience store clerk, despite a broad appeal for mercy by parties that included 3 jurors and the judge from his trial, a former prison director, pastors and members of his family.

A federal judge also decided inmates don’t have a right to know more about the drugs they can choose to kill them COLUMBIA — The U.S. Supreme Court will not stop an inmate’s execution scheduled for Friday, according to a Thursday order. Richard Moore, 59, had asked the nation’s highest court to keep him from the death chamber long enough to hear claims that prosecutors struck Black jurors because of their race during his 2001 trial. But in a two-sentence order, the justices declined.

Richard Moore, a 59-year-old father and grandfather, is scheduled to be executed in South Carolina on Nov. 1 for the 1999 killing of a convenience store clerk in a shootout, though Moore  entered the store without a weapon. His attorneys said he never intended to kill anyone and the death penalty is not a fair punishment. Advocates for commutation include a former state supreme court justice, jurors, a former director of the state’s department of corrections and more.

BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man convicted of breaking into a woman’s home and repeatedly stabbing her was executed Tuesday over the objections of the victim’s family and the prosecutor, who wanted the death sentence commuted to life in prison. Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, who was stabbed during the burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri man seeking to avoid execution suffered dual setbacks Monday as the state’s top court and governor each rejected requests to cancel his scheduled lethal injection. Marcellus Williams is set to be executed at 6 p.m. Tuesday for the 1998 murder of Lisha Gayle, a social worker and former newspaper reporter who was repeatedly stabbed during a burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

The State Supreme Court said the trial had to hold a hearing before accepting a deal that would give the man a sentence of life without parole. In a suburban St. Louis courtroom on Wednesday, it appeared that Marcellus Williams would be spared execution after the local prosecutor’s office raised questions about his guilt and agreed to a prison sentence of life without parole .

BOSTON — Attorneys for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are seeking to remove the judge overseeing the protracted legal battle over Tsarnaev's death sentence. Tsarnaev's lawyers said during a hearing in federal court in Boston on Wednesday that U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole should be recused from the case, pointing to what they said were comments O'Toole made about the case on podcasts and at public events during the appeals process.