Death Penalty News

The upcoming retrial of Richard Glossip, now scheduled for September 28, 2026, marks a pivotal moment in the Oklahoma judicial system. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to vacate his conviction, the case has evolved from a capital punishment dispute into a fundamental test of institutional integrity. Central to this transition is the revelation of "Box 8," a trove of long-withheld prosecution records that exposed a systemic pattern of constitutional violations during the original 2004 proceedings.

South Korea's beleaguered ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol has been found guilty of abuse of power, falsifying documents and obstructing justice when he tried and failed to impose martial law in the country in 2024. He has also been sentenced to five years in jail. Yoon is facing three other trials for charges ranging from insurrection to violating campaign law. The verdict comes more than a year after his short-lived decree threw South Korea into political turmoil, leaving it deeply divided.

The conscience of Oklahomans values fairness. We expect our criminal justice system to be so. However, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that Oklahoma County prosecutors acted so unfairly that the 2004 conviction and death sentence of Richard Glossip had to be undone. In 1997, Glossip was a motel manager. The maintenance man, Justin Sneed, killed the motel owner. Sneed implicated Glossip, making a deal to escape the death penalty. Glossip’s past trials have all been deemed unconstitutional. Yet he was on death row for 27 years and had his last meal three times.

Convincing a Republican attorney general to advocate against a death sentence is a near impossible feat, but Supreme Court roadblocks could force Oklahoma to execute a man in a conviction it doesn’t accept. WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court handed Richard Glossip one loss in 2015 — and if not for a corrections department blunder, he’d be dead. Almost a decade later, Glossip returns to the high court a second time, bringing the justices mountains of support for another trial and hoping a procedural hurdle doesn’t end his case for innocence before it can begin.

On June 19, 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals set aside 68-year-old Kerry Max Cook’s conviction, finding him to be “actually innocent.” Describing Mr. Cook’s case as “one of the most notable murder cases of the last half-century,” the majority opinion explains that “when it comes to solid support for actual innocence, this case contains it all—uncontroverted Brady violations, proof of false testimony, admissions of perjury, and new scientific evidence.”

Convicted of killing his cousin and his cousin’s fiancée, the death row inmate hopes recanted testimony and other new details spur a review of his case LIVINGSTON — In 20 days, state authorities are scheduled to drive death row inmate Ivan Cantu from the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, past freshly built vacation homes on Lake Livingston, along wooded East Texas roads, to the notorious, red-bricked Huntsville Unit, where Texas will execute him. That is if Cantu’s third execution date isn’t canceled like the two before.

Leonard “Raheem” Taylor was convicted for the 2004 murders of Angela Rowe and her three children in Jennings, Missouri. Throughout the trial and appeals, he has maintained his innocence . Court documents show that the murders occurred after Leonard left Angela’s home, where he last saw her and her children alive, and headed to the airport to visit his daughter in California.  Then there is the false statement made by his brother, who says police coerced him, threatened him and his mother, beat him and told him to tell them Leonard had confessed to the crime — a statement that he recanted immediately and repeatedly since then. 

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — A juror in Scott Peterson’s two-decade-old murder trial will be granted immunity before testifying at a hearing that could determine whether a new trial is granted, authorities said. The offer to Richelle Nice will come before she testifies at a Feb. 25 evidentiary hearing, Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager announced Monday.

Official misconduct and perjury or false accusation continue to be the main reasons innocent men and women are wrongfully convicted in America, according to the 2019 annual report by the National Registry of Exonerations. That misconduct, the report indicates, is most prevalent in cases involving the most serious criminal charges. The registry reported on March 31, 2020 that 143 men and women were exonerated in 2019 following wrongful convictions across the United States. More than half (76) involved wrongful convictions for homicide, including three people who had been sentenced to death, and other cases in which innocent defendants had been capitally tried, defendants threatened with the death penalty had falsely confessed, or witnesses threatened with the death penalty had provided testimony falsely implicating innocent defendants. Perjury or false accusation was present in 101 of the 143 exonerations (70.6%), making it the most prevalent factor in the 2019 exonerations, ...