Death Penalty News

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to review the case of Stacey Humphreys , who was sentenced to death in Georgia after a single juror “bullied” the others into voting for death. In an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson , Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the Court’s decision “allowing a death sentence tainted by a single juror’s extraordinary misconduct to stand.” Stacey Humphreys was charged with killing two women inside a model home after forcing them to undress and robbing them at gunpoint.

Six years ago, Louisianans were weighing the merits of requiring juries to arrive at unanimous verdicts, then the law in every other state save for Oregon. The most vocal opposition to the idea came from district attorneys, some of whom warned that a slew of hung-jury verdicts would result if Louisiana stopped allowing convictions on 10-2 or 11-1 votes.

YNW Melly is currently behind bars awaiting his second murder trial.  The 24-year-old is accused of killing two YNW associates, SakChaser and Juvy, back in 2018. His defense claims that the young men were killed as a result of a drive-by shooting, however, prosecutors believe he shot them from within the vehicle. If he’s convicted, he could be facing the death penalty.  In July, jurors were unable to come to a unanimous decision as to whether or not he’s guilty, leading the judge to rule a mistrial.

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) — A jury sentenced Facundo Chávez, the man convicted of killing Deputy Peter Hererra, to death on Wednesday.  Chavez sat teary-eyed in court as the jury delivered its unanimous decision. Judge Diane Navarrete also decided the trial will not result in a mistrial.  The defense team asked her Tuesday to consider declaring a mistrial, arguing the prosecution did not warn the victim's family before showing video of the murder in court, possibly influencing the jury's decision to convict.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A deadlocked jury prompted a mistrial Saturday in the South Florida trial of rapper YNW Melly on charges that he murdered two of his friends five years ago. The 12-member panel could not reach a unanimous verdict after three days of deliberations.  Broward County prosecutors, who had been seeking the death penalty, will likely choose to retry the case with a new jury.  A unanimous verdict is required to convict or acquit a defendant. Broward Circuit Judge John Murphy twice asked the jurors to keep deliberating after they said they were deadlocked, but relented after they came back a third time.

House Bill 14 would require a unanimous vote by jurors to impose a death sentence in capital murder cases in the state of Alabama. The bill is sponsored by State Representative Chris England of Tuscaloosa County. "When I started practicing almost every state imposed the death penalty. Now we are down to 27," said Richard S. Jaffe, a local criminal defense lawyer. "That is very significant in what's going on with the national trend which is many, many, many fewer death verdicts and fewer states even allowing the death penalty. That's the trend." In 3 states, a death sentence can be handed down without a unanimous jury decision.

NBC’s true crime series, Dateline, featured an episode on August 13, 2021 on the wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration of former Philadelphia death-row prisoner Walter Ogrod. The episode, entitled “The Investigation,” is part of an NBC News series called “Justice for All” that reports on wrongful convictions and the U.S. criminal legal system. For the report, NBC News anchor Lester Holt interviewed Ogrod, the mother and stepfather of 4-year-old victim Barbara Jean Horn, journalist Tom Lowenstein, who has written extensively on the case, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and lawyers and investigators who were involved in the multi-decade effort to free Ogrod from death row. The episode features Ogrod’s first national interview about the case since his exoneration in June 2020. NBC marketed the episode as “reveal[ing] decades of misconduct across Philadelphia’s criminal justice system.” Ogrod was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1988 murder of Horn. His...

On May 19, Missouri will conduct the first American execution since the COVID-19 crisis began. The state intends to put Walter Barton to death for killing an 81-year-old mobile home park manager nearly three decades ago. Last month, the state Supreme Court denied Barton’s request to delay the execution because of the public health dangers involved in bringing people together to carry it out. Those dangers seem not to faze some powerful lawmakers and politicians. Barton’s execution is one glaring example of Republican Gov. Mike Parson’s grim determination to return life to normal after Missouri was shut down for two months. The governor, following his party’s playbook, has allowed Missouri’s businesses to reopen. He is also letting residents go out in public without masks, in spite of a dramatic spike in his state’s coronavirus cases. But the circumstances of Barton’s conviction make this rush to execution particularly concerning. “Missouri is about ready to put to deat...

Three months after one of South Carolina’s most bone-chilling trials — the death penalty case of a Lexington County father who killed his 5, young children — jurors remain haunted by what they saw and heard. “I think about it every day,” said a 52-year-old woman with the initials, L.A., who served as an alternate juror until being excused near the trial’s end. “Many times during the trial, I went in the jurors’ bathroom and just wailed – cried my eyes out.” Jurors have stayed silent since June 13, when they unanimously voted to put Tim Jones Jr. to death for the 2014 murders of his children in the family’s Red Bank home. They endured some of the most harrowing testimony ever uttered in a S.C. courtroom — testimony that left veteran police officers and news reporters, seated in the court room, blinking back tears and recoiling in horror at the parade of gruesome evidence. Since then, nine of the 18-member jury panel have spoken to The State Media Co. about their life-cha...