Death Penalty News

Jason Jones will join 11 men on Nebraska’s death row after a three-judge panel unanimously decided on Friday that he should be sentenced to death for a quadruple murder in 2022 that stunned the small town of Laurel. District Court Judge Bryan Meismer, who presided over Jones’ trial, read from the sentencing memorandum at the Cedar County Courthouse on Friday afternoon. The other two judges on the panel, Timothy Burns of Douglas County and Patrick Heng of Red Willow County, sat on either side of Meismer.

State lawmakers on Tuesday sent a bill to the governor’s desk that would allow executions by nitrogen gas in Arkansas.  If Gov. Sarah Huckabee signs House Bill 1489 into law, Arkansas would become the fifth state to authorize this method of execution. Alabama, the only state to have used nitrogen gas, has executed four inmates in this manner since January 2024.  Legislators in Nebraska and Ohio have filed bills similar to Arkansas’ as officials search for alternatives to lethal injection because of the cha llenges they’ve faced in securing the necessary drugs. South Carolina last week carried out the nation’s first execution by firing squad since 2010. 

The state of Indiana is sched­uled to car­ry out its first exe­cu­tion in 15 years on December 18, 2024, with the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Joseph Corcoran. Sentenced to death for the 1997 mur­ders of four peo­ple, includ­ing his broth­er, Mr. Corcoran has a long his­to­ry of seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. He has been diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia, which includes symp­toms of hal­lu­ci­na­tions and delu­sions, and mul­ti­ple experts have tes­ti­fied that he is incom­pe­tent to face exe­cu­tion. Mr. Corcoran holds the con­sis­tent belief that prison guards are tor­tur­ing him with an ultra­sound machine. 

The day after Alabama carried out the first-known US execution using nitrogen gas, its attorney general sent a clear message to death penalty states that might want to follow suit: “Alabama has done it, and now so can you.” Indeed, in the weeks immediately following the January execution of Kenneth Smith, it appeared a handful of states were listening, introducing bills that would adopt the method known as nitrogen hypoxia or a similar one. Officials behind each framed the legislation as an alternative method that could help resume executions where they had long been stalled.

They claim it’s ‘untested, dangerous and inhumane,’ while a proponent calls it ‘painless’ and not subject to shortages LINCOLN — A proposal to use nitrogen gas to carry out executions in Nebraska brought out a parade of opponents to capital punishment on Wednesday. Opponents, ranging from the ACLU of Nebraska to the Nebraska Nurses Association, called using suffocation via nitrogen gas “untested, dangerous and explicitly inhumane” during a public hearing before the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee.

After the recent nitrogen gas execution in Alabama of Kenneth Smith, state Attorney General Steve Marshall said that nitrogen gas “was intended to be — and has now proved to be — an effective and humane method of execution.” It is hard to imagine a statement so obviously disconnected from facts. Eyewitness accounts described Smith’s death as a harrowing experience of dry heaving, thrashing, straining against leather straps, seizures, and terror. It took about a half-hour for Smith to die, although the state had previously predicted it would be over in minutes.

ATMORE (AP) — Alabama’s first-ever use of nitrogen gas for an execution could gain traction among other states and change how the death penalty is carried out in the United States, much like lethal injection did more than 40 years ago, according to experts on capital punishment. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Friday that the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, a 58-year-old convicted of a 1988 murder-for-hire, went off as planned and his office is ready to help other states if they want to begin nitrogen executions.

Iran International Death Penalty News — Throughout 2023, Iran carried out at least 850 executions. Executions in Iran are often criticized due to concerns over the treatment of prisoners, using executions to eliminate dissenting voices, and the lack of access to legal representation. The executions carried out in 850 are an increase over the 578 executions carried out in 2022.

Nebraska would become the fourth state where condemned prisoners could be suffocated to death by forcing them to breathe pure nitrogen gas under a bill introduced at the Legislature on Thursday. Sen. Loren Lippincott’s proposal (LB970) would require the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services to develop a protocol for nitrogen hypoxia in addition to the existing method of lethal injection, which was last used in 2018. While nitrogen hypoxia has never been used as a means of carrying out the death penalty in the U.S., and despite recent warnings from the United Nations' watchdog for human rights, Lippincott said he believes it would be effective.

The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday affirmed the convictions and death sentence for a former Indiana doctor who killed four people in Omaha, including an 11-year-old boy, in a plot to seek revenge on Creighton University's pathology department. Anthony Garcia's case involves two sets of murders, committed five years apart. The investigation into the 2008 killings — of Dr. William Hunter’s 11-year-old son, Thomas, and Shirlee Sherman, the family’s part-time cleaning lady — was revived in 2013 after Dr. Roger Brumback and his wife, Mary, were killed. 

LINCOLN, Neb. — Aubrey Trail, who is convicted of murdering Sydney Loofe, has filed a motion asking the state to carry out the death penalty. In June 2021, a three-judge panel sentenced Trail to death for the 2017 murder of Loofe. In the motion, which was filed Monday, Trail also asks the Nebraska Supreme Court to set an execution date. "Plaintiff does not wish to conduct any further litigation staying the execution of his sentence in either the Nebraska or Federal Courts," the motion states. Trail and Bailey Boswell both were found guilty of first-degree murder in killing the 24-year-old Loofe. 

Commentators usually divide the world of the death penalty into two groups, those places that “have” or “retain” the death penalty and those that don’t. But this summer, Ohio and Nebraska are joining a number of places that don’t really fit into either of those categories. These are jurisdictions whose criminal laws authorize capital punishment but which have gone five years or more without executing anyone. They are what I call quasi-death-penalty states, or de facto abolition states. Adding Ohio and Nebraska will mean that 17 of the 27 states in which capital punishment is legal will not have carried out an execution for at least five years. And in 14 of those 17 states, no one has been put to death in the last ten years or more

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that a 128- to 180-year prison sentence for an Omaha man who committed two murders at age 17 is not excessive. Eric Ramirez, now 30, was 17 when shot and killed 22-year-old Luis Fernando-Silva and 27-year-old Tari Glinsmann during a gang-related string of robberies. A third person, Charles Denton, was also shot but survived. Two other juveniles, then-15-year-old Juan Castaneda and then-18-year-old Edgar Cervantes, were also arrested for taking part in the robbery and killing spree. Cervantes testified for the prosecution at Ramirez’s trial and told the jury that Ramirez was the shooter. After his trial in 2010, Ramirez was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted second-degree murder, three counts of use of a firearm to commit a felony and one count of criminal conspiracy. He was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment.

A coalition of death penalty opponents in Nebraska wants to ask voters in their state to end capital punishment in a 2024 referendum. This is at best a risky strategy. A look at history helps us understand why. But before turning to that history let’s first examine what the Nebraska abolitionists are saying about their plan. On March 16, representatives of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the ACLU of Nebraska, the Nebraska Catholic Conference, and Amnesty International joined Democratic State Senator Terrell McKinney in calling for a referendum to consider an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting capital punishment.

LINCOLN — Opponents of the death penalty argued Thursday that it’s time to give Nebraskans another opportunity to repeal a punishment they called “cruel and inhumane.”  “We say we care about lives and values, but we still support this horrible piece of policy,” said State Sen. Terrell McKinney of Omaha. At a press conference, McKinney was joined by representatives of Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, ACLU of Nebraska, the Nebraska Catholic Conference and Amnesty International in calling for passage of a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit capital punishment.

The illusion of a humane execution is causing more pain, and wasting taxpayer money. One year ago, on Oct. 28, 2021, John Marion Grant was put to death by lethal injection; specifically, a 3-drug combination of a barbiturate to anesthetize (midazolam), curare to paralyze (vecuronium bromide), and potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest. The constituents of the three-drug cocktail are telling: the midazolam is meant to put the prisoner to sleep, and the paralytic is only used to shield the witnesses from seeing what happens when the victim is injected with the third drug, a profoundly painful poison. Yet, a “botched” execution may occur where an individual drug is improperly compounded or where the needle is not inserted properly in a vein by an incompetent technician. Despite claims of an execution “without complication” by the Department of Corrections spokesman Justin Wolf, witnesses and Grant’s autopsy painted a painful picture of his last moments. Once strapped to the gurney, G...

A 45-year-old death row inmate, who is serving sentences for two separate murders, was found dead at the Tecumseh state prison Monday, according to the Nebraska Department of Corrections. The cause of death for Patrick Schroeder remains unclear. As with all inmate deaths, a grand jury will investigate the death. Schroeder had been sentenced to life in 2006 for a first degree murder and forgery. Schroder murdered 75-year-old Kenny Albers, a Pawnee City farmer who had once given him a job. An Otoe County jury sentenced Schroeder to life in prison. In 2017, he killed his Tecumseh cellmate, which led a panel of judges to put him on death row.  After the second murder, he advocated that he deserved the death penalty. “When I knew that they were going to be charging me with the death penalty, I knew what my choices were," Schroeder told Nebraska Public Media. "I knew what I was going to do.” He’s said he would not put up a fight – and that included when the Nebraska Supreme Court r...

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Melissa Lee comforted her son and daughter after a student opened fire in their suburban Kansas City high school, wounding an administrator and a police officer stationed there. Then weeks later, she wept for the parents in Uvalde, Texas, who were forced to bury their children after the massacre there in May. She said she was “absolutely” reassured when she learned her district had since purchased one of the panic-alert systems gaining traction nationwide amid a surge in school violence that includes shootings and fights. The technology, featuring wearable panic buttons or mobile phone apps, enables teachers to notify each other and police in the event of an emergency. “Time is of the essence,” said Lee, whose son helped barricade a classroom door and watched police enter his school with guns drawn. “They can hit a button and, OK, we know something’s wrong, you know, really wrong. And then it puts everybody else on high alert.” Multiple states now mandate or encour...

On Monday, the federal trial over the state's execution protocols will begin. Lawyers for several death row inmates will argue that the state's use of the drug Midazolam creates an "unacceptable risk of serious pain and undue suffering". On top of that, lawyers will try to prove that the state has 3 readily available alternatives to its current lethal injection protocol. The 3 alternative methods for execution the lawyers recommend are as follows: - Removal of paralytic and addition of fentanyl: Using fentanyl as a pre-medication and eliminating vecuronium bromide from the lethal injection cocktail - Barbiturate plus opioid: A single dose of pentobarbital or sodium thiopental, with a predose of an analgesic opioid like fentanyl - Death by firing squad Pentobarbital and sodium thiopental had previously been used by the state in executions, but shortages over the last decade have forced the state to look for other drugs like Midazolam. The shortages of pentobarbital and...

A growing number of Republican state lawmakers are backing efforts to repeal the death penalty, marking a notable shift in conservatives' views on the matter. 8 states have had Republican-sponsored bills to repeal the death penalty introduced during their current legislative sessions, according to the group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty: Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Washington state. Demetrius Minor, national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, told the Washington Examiner that the Republican lawmakers behind these bills are "making a strong statement about the failures of the death penalty.” “Their actions continue the trend of GOP state legislators moving away from capital punishment,” Minor said. “They know that the death penalty does not align with their conservative principles of valuing limited government, fiscal conservatism, and life.” Some of these lawmakers acknowledged a personal shift o...