Death Penalty News

Francis Clifford Smith was given his last meal eight times. But after being spared execution each time, he went on to be regarded as the longest-serving prisoner in the US before dying in June at 101 years old. Convicted of murder in 1950 when he was 25, he always maintained his innocence, those who knew him told the BBC. Andrius Banevicius, the public information officer for Connecticut's Department of Correction, recounted how Smith used to feed the birds while in Osborn Prison, earning him the nickname The Birdman of Osborn.

The Winter Garden Police chief was at a party on Christmas Eve 1975 when he received a phone call from his friend Tommy Zeigler, the owner of a furniture store on Dillard Street. “I’ve been shot, please hurry,” Zeigler told the chief as he struggled for breath. When police arrived at the store, Zeigler, 30, managed to unlock the door and then collapsed “with a gaping bullet hole through his lower abdomen,” court records show. In the store, detectives found a gruesome, bloody crime scene and several guns. Four other people — Zeigler’s wife, his in-laws and a laborer — lay dead.

Fred Singleton couldn’t receive a death warrant because he was considered mentally incompetent COLUMBIA — South Carolina ’s longest-serving death row inmate died this week in a prison infirmary of natural causes, the Department of Corrections said Friday. Fred Singleton, 81, died Monday, according to an online post by the agency that oversees the state’s prisons. He was one of 25 inmates on death row at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia after executions resumed in September 2024.

Mississippi executes a man convicted of raping and killing a college student  A Mississippi man convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 20-year-old community college student in 1993 was executed Wednesday.  Charles Crawford, 59, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. following a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.  Crawford had spent more than 30 years on death row. His execution comes several months after the execution of Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate in a year of increasing executions nationwide. 

Mississippi executes inmate who’s been on death row almost half a century Richard Gerald Jordan, 79, received a lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary after being on death row since 1976  Mississippi has executed Richard Gerald Jordan, the state’s longest-serving death row inmate.  Jordan, 79, was put to death by lethal injection at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman Wednesday evening, nearly 50 years on from when he kidnapped and killed a bank loan officer’s wife in a violent ransom scheme.

The court upheld the previous ruling, stating Jordan didn't prove the three-drug lethal injection protocol would cause undue suffering. Mississippi prisoner Richard Gerald Jordan was dealt another blow in his last-minute effort to stop his execution, set for Wednesday, June 25. On Tuesday afternoon, June 24, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate's ruling on Jordan's petition for a preliminary injunction to protest the state's three-drug protocol for lethal injection executions.

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate is seeking clemency from Gov. Tate Reeves. On Monday, attorneys for Richard Gerald Jordan filed the petition, asking the governor to commute his sentence to life in prison without parole. Jordan’s attorneys are also requesting a 15-minute in-person or virtual interview with the state’s top elected leader. “It is the long-standing practice of the Office of the Governor in Mississippi to allow a 15 to 20-minute meeting with a death-sentenced inmate’s representatives,” Frank Rosenblatt, a representative for Jordan wrote.

The Mississippi Supreme Court set an execution date for Richard Jordan, the state's oldest and longest-serving prisoner on death row. The execution date is set for June 25, exactly one month after his 79th birthday. Jordan has been on death row in Mississippi since 1977 for the 1976 kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter, the wife of a Gulfport bank executive. "After due consideration, the Court finds Jordan has exhausted all state and federal remedies for purposes of setting an execution date," the court wrote in its decision. "Accordingly, the Court finds the State's Motion to Set Execution Date should be granted and a date should be set for execution of the death sentence imposed upon Jordan."

Bruce Ward, a convicted murderer who was the longest-serving inmate on Arkansas’ death row, has died, the state Department of Corrections said. He was 68.  The state Department of Corrections said Ward was pronounced dead Tuesday from natural causes. He had been held on death row at the Varner SuperMax unit in Gould, located 67 miles (108 kilometers) south of Little Rock.  Citing confidentiality, the department declined to provide any further details on Ward’s health or the circumstances surrounding his death. 

An 88-year-old Japanese man who at one point was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been presented with a rosary blessed by Pope Francis. Archbishop Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo recently visited Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer and convert to Catholicism, to make the presentation of the papal gift to the now officially innocent octogenarian. Following his release from prison in 2014 because of new DNA evidence – after 48 years on death row – Hakamada still wasn’t officially proclaimed innocent until his definitive acquittal a decade later.

Hideko Hakamada, 91, fought half her life to free her brother - the world's longest serving death row inmate When a court declared Iwao Hakamada innocent in September , the world's longest-serving death row inmate seemed unable to comprehend, much less savour the moment. "I told him he was acquitted, and he was silent," Hideko Hakamada, his 91-year-old sister, tells the BBC at her home in Hamamatsu, Japan. "I couldn't tell whether he understood or not."

Mississippi has 35 men and one woman awaiting execution on death row. The state Supreme Court handed down two decisions Thursday that dealt blows to two men on Mississippi's death row. Richard Jordan, who has been on death row in Mississippi since 1977 for the 1976 kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter, the wife of a Gulfport bank executive, learned the court denied a motion for rehearing in his pursuit of post-conviction relief.

After surviving a botched execution attempt in February, Thomas Creech (pictured) was scheduled for  execution a second time on November 13 in Idaho. On Wednesday, November 6, a federal district court issued a stay of execution to allow more time to consider Mr. Creech’s legal claims. The Idaho Department of Corrections announced that “execution preparations have been suspended” and the execution warrant will expire.

HAMAMATSU, Japan (AP) — Hideko Hakamada, 91, spent much of her life working to free her brother from nearly a half-century on death row. Now that he has been acquitted she feels that the siblings are beginning a new chapter of their lives. She backed her brother, Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, through decades of frustrating, at times apparently hopeless, legal wrangling as his mental condition worsened.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi attorney general on Tuesday requested an execution date for the state’s longest-serving death row inmate. Richard Gerald Jordan, now 78, was sentenced to death in 1976 for the kidnapping and killing of Edwina Marter earlier that year in Harrison County. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected Jordan’s latest appeal Tuesday, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed papers hours later asking the court to set a date for the lethal injection.

World's longest-serving death row inmate mulls suing govt after acquittal A lawyer for the world’s longest-serving death row inmate — who was acquitted in a Japanese retrial last week of a 1966 quadruple murder — said that the defence team is considering filing a damage suit against the government over the fabrication of evidence that ruined the man’s life and his mental health by keeping him in prison for 48 years. Iwao Hakamada, an 88-year-old former boxer, was found not guilty last week by the Shizuoka District Court which concluded that police and prosecutors collaborated in fabricating and planting evidence against him. The court said he was forced into confession by violent, hours-long closed interrogations.

The world's longest-serving death row inmate hailed his historic acquittal as a "complete victory" on Sunday, just days after a Japanese court declared Iwao Hakamada innocent of a 1966 quadruple murder. The 88-year-old former boxer spent 46 years on death row, mostly in solitary confinement.  The world's longest-serving death row prisoner thanked his supporters for helping him achieve "complete victory" after a Japanese court last week overturned his decades-old murder conviction.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan has renewed its call for the abolition of the death penalty following the acquittal of Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate. “With the verdict of acquittal of Mr. Hakamada, we would like to call on Japanese society to once again consider the merits and demerits of the death penalty,” said Archbishop Tarcisio Kikuchi Isao of Tokyo, President of the Japanese Bishops’ Conference. The 88-year-old was found not guilty by the Shizuoka District Court , ending more than five decades of imprisonment.

TOKYO — A Japanese court ruled Thursday that an 88-year-old former boxer was not guilty in a retrial for a 1966 quadruple murder, reversing an earlier wrongful conviction after decades on death row. Iwao Hakamada's acquittal by the Shizuoka District Court makes him the fifth death-row convict to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japanese criminal justice. The case could rekindle a debate around abolishing the death penalty in Japan. The court's presiding judge, Koshi Kunii, said the court acknowledged multiple fabrications of evidence and that Hakamada was not the culprit, NHK said.

Tokyo (AFP) – The world's longest-serving death row prisoner hears from a Japanese court on Thursday if he will again face execution or finally be acquitted, a decade after obtaining a retrial of his murder conviction. Iwao Hakamada, 88, was jailed under the death penalty for 46 years until he was freed in 2014 pending a retrial. The former boxer was first convicted in 1968 of killing his boss, the man's wife and their two teenage children.