Death Penalty News

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York—name a Northeastern state, and you will be naming a place where there is no death penalty. New Hampshire was the latest to join the list in 2019.  But there is one glaring omission.  Pennsylvania. In the Keystone State, capital punishment is legal, even though no one has been executed there since 1999. The state exists in a kind of death penalty limbo, not abolishing it but unable or unwilling to carry out death sentences.  Recent polls suggest that the residents of Pennsylvania are ready to break the logjam. 58% now favor a life sentence rather than the death penalty for people convicted of murder. 

The death row population in the U.S. has dropped below 2,000 for the first time since the 1980s, according to the latest report on national capital punishment trends released by the civil rights think tank Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF). The Spring 2026 edition of Death Row U.S.A., which tracks state and national data on death row populations, executions, the race and sex of victims in execution cases, and the impact of moratoria and judicial reversals, shows that the nation’s death row population now stands at 1,993, down 47% from its peak of 3,726 in January 2001. The current death-row population is the smallest recorded in LDF’s more than 50 years of monitoring since December 1987, when 1,982 incarcerated people faced execution.

In the high-stakes theater of the American legal system, the trial is often sold as a quest for truth. We imagine a defendant standing before a jury of their peers, a fair fight where the burden of proof rests entirely with the state. But for those facing the ultimate punishment, the reality is far darker. The death penalty transforms the legal process into a high-pressure extraction, where the right to a jury trial is often a trap that leads straight to a coercive plea bargain.

On December 5, 2025, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro issued an exe­cu­tion reprieve for Richard Roland Laird, the same day the Department of Corrections Secretary Laurel Harry signed a Notice of Execution for January 2, 2026. In issu­ing the same-day reprieve, Gov. Shapiro act­ed on his promise to main­tain an exe­cu­tion mora­to­ri­um in Pennsylvania. In February 2023, Gov. Shapiro announced he would con­tin­ue his pre­de­ces­sor Tom Wolf’s halt on exe­cu­tions, and called upon the Pennsylvania General Assembly to repeal the death penal­ty. He stat­ed: ​“When an exe­cu­tion war­rant comes to my desk, I will sign a reprieve each and every time.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro issued his 1st death penalty reprieve earlier this month, as advocates for abolishing capital punishment say the political winds continue to shift slowly in their favor.  The reprieve — issued Dec. 5 with little fanfare — fulfills Shapiro’s promise to maintain the moratorium on executions that began under his predecessor, Tom Wolf. Both governors said they would not carry out any death sentences, asking the legislature to pass sentencing reform that includes eliminating the death penalty. 

A PhD student in the US accused of killing her friends’ baby and abusing his twin brother could face the death penalty if convicted. Nicole Virzi has been charged with murdering six-and-a-half-week-old Leon Katz while she babysat him at the family’s home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The 29-year-old is also accused of abusing Leon’s twin brother Ari.

Former President Donald Trump was injured Saturday evening during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in what the FBI says was an assassination attempt. The gunman and at least one audience member are dead, the Secret Service said, and two other attendees are critically injured. Trump said on social media that he was shot and hit by a bullet in the “upper part of my right ear.” The Secret Service said the former president is safe after he was rushed off the stage with blood on his face.

PROSPECT HEIGHTS – After the 200th death row exoneration in the United States since 1973 earlier this week, a Catholic organization that advocates against the death penalty is calling for an end to the “broken system of capital punishment” to ensure innocent people aren’t executed in the future.

Deranged nurse escapes the death penalty as she admits to killing three patients - and has been connected to 14 more - by injecting them with lethal amounts on insulin A Pennsylvania nurse who administered lethal or potentially lethal doses of insulin to numerous patients avoided the death penalty after she pleaded guilty to three counts of murder.

A bill to repeal the death penalty in Pennsylvania has passed a committee in the commonwealth’s House of Representatives. The Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee voted 15-10 in favor of HB 999 on October 31, 2023. That vote is the first step toward abolishing the death penalty in Pennsylvania, which has had a formal moratorium on executions since 2015 and has not executed anyone since 1999.

Pennsylvania nurse is accused of killing 4 patients, injuring others with high doses of insulin A registered nurse in Pennsylvania faces charges she administered lethal or potentially lethal doses of insulin to numerous patients — including a 104-year-old — at health care facilities over the past 3 years, prosecutors announced Thursday. Heather Pressdee, 41, had been accused in May of killing 2 nursing home patients and injuring a third. She was arraigned Thursday on the additional counts, including two new homicide charges, and waived a preliminary hearing.

PITTSBURGH — The gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers will be sentenced to death for perpetrating the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, a jury decided Wednesday. Robert Bowers spewed hatred of Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs online before methodically planning and carrying out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where members of three congregations had gathered for Sabbath worship and study. Bowers, a truck driver from suburban Baldwin, also wounded two worshippers and five responding police officers. The same federal jury that convicted the 50-year-old Bowers on 63 criminal counts recommended that he be put to death for an attack whose impacts continue to reverberate nearly five years later. He showed little reaction as the sentence was announced, briefly acknowledging his legal team and family as he was led from the courtroom. A judge will formally impose the sentence Thursday. Juro...

Jurors are continuing to deliberate the fate of the convicted Pittsburgh synagogue shooter PITTSBURGH — As jurors deliberate on the fate of the convicted shooter who killed 11 Jewish worshippers in the Tree of Life Synagogue, the Jewish community is split on its support of the death penalty. In mid-April, before the trial started, sisters Michele and Diane Rosenthal, sisters to two shooting victims David and Cecil Rosenthal, told reporters that a majority of the victims' families are in support of capital punishment in this case. "We don't want to be here, and we know the emotional toll this trial potentially brings, but we owe it to our brothers Cecil and David," Diane Rosenthal said at the time.

A jury has found a gunman who murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue is eligible for the death penalty. Robert Bowers, 50, was found guilty last month for the October 2018 attack. This is the second stage of the trial. It now moves on to its final phase, sentencing selection. The same jury will have to decide if Bowers should receive life in prison or be sentenced to death for carrying out the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history. During the last trial phase, the jury will hear victim impact statements and other evidence before deciding if Bowers should be put to death.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- In deciding whether the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter will face the death penalty, the jury must first decide if he is eligible for the ultimate punishment.  On Monday, the final witness in this phase of the trial testified he meets all the qualifications.  Forensic psychiatrist Park Deitz is a nationally known expert in criminal psychology who has analyzed defendants or consulted in high-profile cases like Jeffrey Dahmer and unabomber Ted Kaczynski.  Deitz told the jury the gunman doesn't have schizophrenia or epilepsy but a personality disorder resulting in social isolation. The gunman, he said, was a loner who lacked close friends and communicated hour after hour only with other white supremacists on the internet who stoked his antisemitic hatred and wild conspiracy theories about Jews.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The sentencing phase of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial is set to begin next week and jurors will decide whether or not the convicted gunman should face the death penalty. Last week, Robert Bowers was convicted and found guilty of all 63 federal charges he was facing for the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue on October 27, 2018 when he killed 11 worshippers from three different congregations, Tree of Life, Dor Hadash, and New Light. It was the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil and David Rosenthal, Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, Irving Younger were all shot and killed that morning. 

A truck driver who spewed hatred of Jews has been convicted of barging into a Pittsburgh synagogue on the Jewish Sabbath and fatally shooting 11 congregants in an act of antisemitic terror for which he could be sentenced to die PITTSBURGH (AP) — A truck driver who spewed hatred of Jews was convicted Friday of barging into a Pittsburgh synagogue and shooting everyone he could find, killing 11 congregants in an act of antisemitic terror for which he could be sentenced to die. The guilty verdict was a foregone conclusion after Robert Bowers’ own lawyers conceded at the trial’s outset that he attacked and killed worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, in the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history. Jurors must now decide whether the 50-year-old should be sent to death row or sentenced to life in prison without parole as the federal trial shifts to a penalty phase expected to last several weeks.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — One by one over the past two weeks, members of Jewish congregations in Pittsburgh have come to the witness stand in federal court and relived the horror of that October morning, when a gunman used high-powered weapons to kill 11 worshippers and badly injure others. Police officers have testified about responding to a scene of horrific carnage and immediately coming under fire themselves, some suffering life-altering wounds from a gunman raging against Jews in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. All of this is being entered fastidiously into the record for the benefit of the jurors and alternates in a federal courtroom in Pittsburgh. So are hundreds of court exhibits showing the aftermath of the violent invasion of sacred worship that day in the Tree of Life synagogue building.

On May 25, 2023, 12 death-qualified jurors and six alternates were selected in the federal capital trial of Robert Bowers, who is charged with killing 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.  Prosecutors struck all the Black, Hispanic, and Jewish venire members. As testimony begins on May 30, some victims’ family members have expressed support for capital punishment, while others have objected. Seven of the nine families who lost a relative expressed support for the death penalty in a 2021 letter they sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland.  On the other hand, the New Light and Dor Hadash congregations , including Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, who was wounded in the attack, and Miri Rabinowitz, whose husband was killed in the attack, urged Garland to forego the death penalty and instead seek a life sentence. 

The trial of the man charged in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history opened Tuesday with his own lawyer acknowledging that he planned and carried out the 2018 massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue and made hateful statements about Jewish people. Robert Bowers went to Tree of Life synagogue and “shot every person he saw,” defense attorney Judy Clarke acknowledged in her opening statement. Bowers, 50, could face the death penalty if he’s convicted of some of the 63 counts he faces in the Oct. 27, 2018, attack, which claimed the lives of 11 worshippers from three congregations who shared the building. Charges include 11 counts each of obstruction of free exercise of religion resulting in death and hate crimes resulting in death.