Death Penalty News

Malaysia’s Court of Appeal has replaced the death sentence of a former college student convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend with 40 years’ imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane. PUTRAJAYA, MALAYSIA: Malaysia’s Court of Appeal has commuted the death sentence imposed on a former college student convicted of murdering his pregnant girlfriend, replacing it with 40 years’ imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane. A three-member bench chaired by Justice Azman Abdullah allowed the appeal by Fakrul Aiman Sajali on 14 May 2026 and substituted the death penalty handed down earlier by the High Court.

If Christa Gail Pike's execution proceeds as planned next year, she will become the first woman put to death in Tennessee since the state began to formally document capital punishment more than a century ago. After attempted appeals by Pike's attorneys repeatedly failed, the Tennessee Supreme Court on Tuesday set a date for her to be executed. The order granted a scheduling request from the state for the death warrant to be carried out Sept. 30, 2026, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, which houses a majority of Tennessee's death row inmates. Under the terms of this week's state Supreme Court order, the prison warden is obligated to notify Pike of the method that the Department of Correction will use to execute her by Aug. 28. 

Man executed for raping, killing Florida woman outside bar  A man convicted of raping and killing a woman near a central Florida bar was executed Tuesday evening.  Thomas Lee Gudinas, 51, received a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, following decades on death row for the 1994 killing of Michelle McGrath. His execution proceeded as scheduled after last-day appeals were denied. DOC spokesperson Ted Veerman reported that Gudinas woke up at 4:45 a.m. His last meal was a pepperoni pizza, fries, and a soda. He had one visitor today—his mother. When asked about how the DOC staff is handling the pace of executions, Veerman said the “professional” staff is doing a “fantastic job.” When the curtain to the execution room opened at 6.00pm, Gudinas was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his left arm. Then, after the warden got off the phone with the governor’s office, he asked Gudinas whether he wanted to make a last statement. Although Gudinas’s words were inau...

The Michigan Supreme Court ruled last week that a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole for young adults who were 19 or 20 years old at the time of the offense is a “grossly disproportionate punishment” that violates the Michigan Constitution. The decision extends to 19- and 20-year-olds the court’s 2022 ruling in People v. Parks , which applied the federal constitutional ban on automatic life-without-parole sentences for juveniles to 18-year-olds under the broader and more protective provisions of the Michigan Constitution.

The condemned man has exhausted his appeals but is likely to seek a clemency plea. Indiana Supreme Court justices on Tuesday set a May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie, who was convicted in 2002 for killing a law enforcement officer from Beech Grove. The high court’s decision followed a series of exhausted appeals previously filed by Ritchie and his legal team. The inmate’s request for post-conviction relief was denied in Tuesday’s 13-page order, penned by Chief Justice Loretta Rush, although she disagreed with the decision in her opinion.

Ramiro Gonzales is due to be executed by Texas on June 26 In 2006, Ramiro Gonzales was sentenced to death in Texas as punishment for kidnapping, raping and killing Bridget Townsend when they were both 18 years old. There were indications that Gonzales did not represent the “worst of the worst” kind of criminal that the death penalty is supposedly reserved for. Like many on death row, he endured horrific abuse and neglect as a child. He turned to drugs and alcohol as a teen to cope; he killed Townsend, his drug dealer’s girlfriend, while trying to steal drugs. 

BUFFALO — Lawyers for the shooter who killed 10 people at a Tops grocery store in 2022 have asked for a federal court order exempting him from the death penalty because he was 18 years old at the time of the racist mass shooting. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for juvenile offenders was unconstitutional. Since that ruling carved out an exemption for people under 18, the science of late-adolescent brain development has advanced markedly, according to the public defense lawyers for Payton Gendron.

KOFU, Japan (Kyodo) -- The death sentence has been finalized for a 21-year-old man convicted of murder and arson as a minor in 2021 after he withdrew an appeal, a Japanese court said Friday. The defense team for Yuki Endo filed the appeal on the deadline Thursday, but the defendant withdrew it later in the day, the Kofu District Court said.

A Japanese court sentenced a 21-year-old man to death on Thursday for the 2021 murder of two and arson, in the first case of capital punishment being given to an offender who was a minor at the time of the crime but whose name has been revealed under a 2022 revision of the Juveniles Law. The defendant, Yuki Endo, was 19 at the time of the attack in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, in central Japan.  The law change in April 2022 allows media to reveal the identities of 18- and 19-year-old offenders once they are indicted.

In a significant ruling that underscores the Indian judiciary’s nuanced approach to capital punishment, the Karnataka High Court has commuted the death sentences of three men convicted of a 2013 double-murder to life imprisonment.  The bench, comprising Justices Sreenivas Harish Kumar and Ramachandra Huddar, delivered the verdict on December 19, 2023, maintaining that the case did not embody the ‘rarest of rare’ criteria necessary for upholding a death sentence.

A North Texas man has earned his Master's degree, a feat made extra special when you consider he was once on death row for a murder he did not commit. His exoneration offered him a 2nd chance. Ryan Matthews, the new owner of a master's degree in business analytics from Texas Woman's University, had to overcome the obstacle of a lifetime to get here.

Against a backdrop of high-profile innocence cases and the U.S. Supreme Court’s seeming indifference to them, the 2023 Gallup poll found that more Americans now believe that the death penalty is administered unfairly than fairly.   Use of the death penalty remained geographically isolated, with only five states carrying out executions and only seven imposing death sentences.  For the ninth consecutive year, fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 were sentenced to death. These findings headline DPIC’s 2023 Year End Report , released on December 1.

According to data analyzed by the DPIC, 79% of the death row inmates executed in 2023 had some disability or impairment, including serious mental illness, brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the range considered intellectually disabled; and/or chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect and/or abuse. The report adds: "One-third or eight of the people executed had all three. At least three prisoners were under the age of 20 at the time of their crimes." Phillip Hancock on Thursday became the fourth death row inmate executed in Oklahoma this year. The state's parole board had voted 3-2 to recommend clemency for Hancock, who was convicted for the 2001 murders of two men, but the governor declined to intervene.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); November 24, 2023: State media have reported the execution of an unnamed 18-year-old man for murder in Sabzevar. According to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency, a young man was executed in Sabzevar on 24 November.  The exact location of the unnamed man’s execution has not been specified.  He was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder.

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama inmate convicted of killing a man during a 1993 robbery when he was a teenager was executed Thursday by lethal injection. Casey McWhorter, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. at a southwest Alabama prison, authorities said. McWhorter was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for his role in the robbery and shooting death of Edward Lee Williams, 34, on Feb. 18, 1993.

Texas man executed after more than 30 years on death row A Texas man who spent more than 30 years on death row for a murder he committed during a robbery when he was 19 has been executed. Brent Brewer, 53, was put to death yesterday evening by lethal injection at the Texas State Penitentiary in the town of Huntsville, prison officials said. Brewer was sentenced to death in 1991 for fatally stabbing 66-year-old Robert Laminack the previous year, in a robbery that netted $140 in cash.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A Knox County judge has rejected a bid to vacate the death sentence of Christa Pike, the only woman on death row in Tennessee and the youngest American woman to be sentenced to death since 1972. Pike and two others were convicted in the brutal murder of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer when all four teens were participating in Job Corps, a federal jobs training program for troubled adolescents, in Knoxville. Pike, 18 at the time, became the youngest woman to be sentenced to death in the United States since 1972. Tadaryl Shipp, 17 at the time, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole plus 25 years. Shadolla Peterson, 19, received probation after turning informant for the state’s case against Pike and Shipp.

Casey McWhorter is scheduled to be the 1st man from Marshall County to die by execution. McWhorter, now 49 years old, was sentenced to the death penalty in 1994, following the 1993 murder of Edward Lee Williams. Earlier this month, Governor Kay Ivey set a 30-hour time frame for McWhorter’s execution. It is set to start at 12:00am on Thursday, November 16th and runs through 6:00am on Friday, November 17th.

Casey McWhorter is scheduled to be executed anytime between 12:00 a.m. on Thursday, November 16, 2023, and 6:00 a.m. on Friday, November 17, 2023, at the Holman Correctional Facility near Atmore, Alabama.  49-year-old Casey is convicted of murdering Edward Lee Williams, Sr., on February 18, 1993, in Albertville, Alabama.  For the last 29 years, Casey has resided on Alabama’s death row.

A teenager accused of killing his family is scheduled to appear in court Monday for a pretrial hearing. Cesar Olalde, 18, has been indicted on charges of capital murder of multiple persons and capital murder of a child under 10. He pleaded not guilty at a previous hearing before Judge John Tidwell at Bi-State Justice Center. Olalde remains in the Bi-State Detention Center on a $10 million bail. He is represented by Bowie County Public Defender Jeff Harrelson.