Death Penalty News

IN the last 100 years, more than 40 women have been executed in the United States. But the death sentencing rate and the death row population remains very low for women in comparison to men. How many women are on death row in the US? According to the Death Penalty Information Center, women are rarely sentenced to death in the United States and executions of women are even rarer. As of April 1, 2021, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said there were 51 women on death row across the United States. In total, there are around 2,500 people on death row in America. Actual execution of female offenders is quite rare. As of December 31, 2020, there have only been 575 documented executions, with the first recorded in 1632. The executions make up about 3.6 per cent of the total of 16,018 confirmed executions in the United States between 1608 and 2020. Who was the last woman to be executed in the US? Between 1973 and December 2020, 185 death sentences were given to female offenders, ma...

Ronald Phillips Recently, at the Community Church in Woodland Hills, California, a woman sang “ Amazing Grace .” She sang slow with sweet, lilting sorrow, letting each dolorous, weighty note saturate the space with sound. She sang right in front of the same pulpit where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once preached, on his birthday, on January 15, 1961. Invited by Rev. Frank Doty, a progressive and persistent white pastor who refused to take “no” for an answer, Dr. King told the assembled congregation over a half-century ago: “Love yourself, if that means rational and healthy interest. You are commanded to do that. That is the length of life. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are commanded to do that. That is the breadth of life.” From that hallowed ground, before she sang, the woman told the story of John Newton, the slave trafficker and improbable author of “Amazing Grace”; she explained, with care, how, because of Newton’s salvation, the song’s lyrics are a pow...

Georgia's death chamber Georgia inmate J.W. Ledford Jr. used his final moments to quote from the movie "Cool Hand Luke" and toss out an insult. "What we have here is a failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So that's why we have here what we have here today. I am not the failure. You are the failure to communicate," Ledford said just after 1 a.m. on May 17, before a lethal dose of the barbiturate pentobarbital began to flow into his veins. "You can kiss my white trash ass," he added. "I'm just shaking the bush boss, let's do it." It was one of the more unusual statements made by a Georgia death row inmate in the final moments. Strapped to a gurney that's tilted toward the witness seats, condemned inmates are given two minutes to make a last statement. Many apologize to the families of their victims or thank their own families, friends and lawyers for support. Others insist they are inno...

Lethal injection is the primary method used for the death penalty and in just days it'll be used on a Georgia death row inmate, but the drugs limited availability has some states looking for a new solution. The method has been the primary use of execution since 1982 and now 1,425 executions later, states are starting to rethink it for the death penalty.  Virginia has a bill on the table trying to bring back the electric chair. It's passed the state house and senate and now waits for a Governor's signature. The main reason, the lethal drugs are hard to come by and we are seeing that close to home. Last year, South Carolina ran out of the lethal injection cocktail, putting 44 executions on hold.  Also in March of last year the 1st woman put on Georgia's death row in 70 years Kelly Gissender had her death rescheduled several times between march and June because the lethal drug again was hard to come by. Also in June there was a case of cloudiness due...

Georgia Death Chamber A look at the state's history of bad lawyering and faulty evidence. Since December 2014, Georgia has executed a man whose drunk lawyer bungled the case, a man with intellectual disabilities, a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, and a woman who planned but did not actually commit murder. On Thursday, the state will put to death a man who was not conclusively identified by DNA from the crime scene. These cases are no outliers; they are emblematic of a particularly harsh time in our state's history when death sentences were handed out frequently despite substantive and procedural flaws. And they encapsulate what's wrong with capital punishment in Georgia. Here, a closer look at those flaws. Offering ineffective assistance of counsel Georgia's statewide public defender office opened in 2005, and in the past 10 years, there has been a sharp decline in death sentences. Before 2005, however, the right to counsel was ...

Protesting Kelly Gissendaner's execution, Sept. 30, 2015 Pope Francis had some mojo going. Adoring crowds thronged the streets during his recent visit. It was in the wake of that communal enthusiasm that the pontiff forwarded a plea to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles: don't give Kelly Gissendaner the needle. The board, which operates in a cloud of secrecy, was unmoved. Soon, she was dead . Lobbying efforts from candle-holding crowds, Gissendaner's kids (who were also the victim's) and even God's wingman himself didn't nudge the board to sympathy. Nor did the countless legal appeals. Gissendaner made news in February for ordering 2 cheese Whoppers for her last meal (this time it was fajitas). She was convicted in 1998 of masterminding her husband's vicious stabbing murder. Her boyfriend/henchman confessed, helping strap Gissendaner on the gurney while he someday will be paroled. That's not fair, her supporters contended, arguing ...

Three recent death penalty cases have exposed concerns about executing those convicted of planning a murder - especially when the actual killers receive a lighter punishment. On 7 February 1997, Douglas Gissendaner was kidnapped at knifepoint from his home, driven to a secluded woods and forced to walk to a muddy patch. Douglas - a mechanic and former serviceman in the US Army - was bludgeoned with a night stick, then stabbed repeatedly in the neck and back. His body was not discovered for two weeks. Kelly Gissendaner was sentenced to death for her husband's murder. On Tuesday, nearly 20 years after the killing, the state of Georgia executed her by lethal injection. No one contests that on the night Douglas was killed, Kelly was nowhere near the woods. She was out at a nightclub with friends. It was her boyfriend, Gregory Owen, who lay in wait for Douglas, marched him into the woods, then left him face down in the mud after stabbing him. Kelly set Douglas up: sh...

“It is unacceptable that this cruel and inhuman punishment should be allowed to continue. The death penalty system is irrevocably broken. It is time to end it once and for all.” - Steven W. Hawkins , executive director of Amnesty International USA, on Kelly Gissendaner's execution in Georgia on September 29, 2015. Report an error, an omission: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com

Peter denied Jesus 3 times. Today and over the next several days, we will deny Peter's apostolic successor 3 times. Pope Francis, during his visit last week to the United States, reiterated his and the Catholic Church's current opposition to capital punishment; yet, 3 executions are imminent. As I write this, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole is meeting and listening to Kelly Gissendaner's son, Brandon, whose brother and sister have already pleaded for mercy for their mother. In 1997 Kelly Gissendaner murdered Doug Gissendaner, who was the stepfather to Gissendaner's sons and father to her daughter. Other inmates, officials, clergy, and theologians - including Jurgen Moltmann - have asked that Gissendaner not be executed. The 2nd execution is scheduled for Sept. 30 in Oklahoma. However, death row inmate Richard Glossip's case raises many doubts, especially since he was convicted solely on the testimony of only one witness, who confessed to the crime...

Kelly Gissendaner The U.S. state of Georgia executed its only woman on death row on Wednesday, marking the first time in 70 years the state has carried out a death sentence on a woman, a prison official said. Kelly Gissendaner, 47, died by lethal injection at 12:21 a.m. EDT at Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, a prison spokeswoman said. Gissendaner was sentenced to death after being convicted of what is known in the state as malice murder for her role in plotting the killing of her husband, Douglas, in 1997. Pope Francis, who concluded a six-day U.S. trip on Sunday and is an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, had urged officials to commute her death sentence. Gissendaner's execution marks the first death sentence carried out against a woman in Georgia in 70 years. She was the 16th woman executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied last-minute...