Death Penalty News

Florida administers executions by lethal injection or electric chair. In 2000, then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed legislation making lethal injection the state’s default method of execution amid controversy over the electric chair.  The last inmate Florida executed by electrocution was Allen Davis in July 1999. Witnesses described blood streaming from Davis’ nose and onto his shirt, which drew widespread attention two years after an inmate’s mask burst into flames during a different Florida electrocution. Since then, 57 people have been executed by lethal injection and none by electric chair. Prior to 2000, there were 44 electrocution executions.

Oklahoma will soon begin executing death row inmates at a pace of about 1 man per month, with plans to put to death 25 prisoners over the next 2 years despite cries by critics and experts who point not only to outstanding questions of the mental fitness or possible innocence of some but also the state’s recent history of botched lethal injections. “It’s just yet one more reckless move by Oklahoma,” Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor, told CNN of the state’s scheduled execution timetable, which she said is in line with its staunch, decadeslong record of capital punishment. “If there was going to be any state that was going to do something so obviously irresponsible and unjust … it would be the state of Oklahoma, given the history.” James Coddington is the 1st scheduled to be executed on August 25. He would have been followed about a month later by Richard Glossip, who has maintained his innocence and on Tuesday got a 60-day stay of execution so an appeals court can comple...

Missing and destroyed evidence, an allegedly false confession, and a lack of physical proof drive investigation to exonerate Glossip who is awaiting execution in Oklahoma Oklahoma Death Row inmate Richard Glossip’s quest for freedom continued Wednesday when a cadre of lawyers and lawmakers assembled in the Oklahoma House of Representatives Press Room to present the findings of a new independent investigation into his case. Glossip has been on death row for 25 years for the 1997 murder-for-hire of his boss, hotel owner Barry Van Treese, a crime he says he did not commit. He’s accused of hiring Justin Sneed to undertake the crime; Sneed is serving life in prison. The investigation, which launched in February, was undertaken pro-bono by 30 attorneys from law firm Reed Smith at the behest of 35 Oklahoma state lawmakers, including 29 Republicans. Republican State Representatives Kevin McDugle and Blake “Cowboy” Stephens, were in attendance at the press conference, where McDugle outlined the...

A federal judge is set to decide soon if he will dismiss death row prisoner Zane Floyd’s challenge to his execution. U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware said last month that the challenge from the quadruple convicted killer could be dismissed now that some of the drugs the state intended to use in the lethal injection cocktail have expired. Boulware gave Floyd’s lawyers and attorneys with the Nevada Department of Corrections 3 weeks to submit motions arguing whether the case was moot. But court documents filed Monday show that attorneys on both sides agree on one aspect of the case. “While the parties have respectfully but strenuously disagreed on most everything over this case throughout the past year, on this issue they show a united front: this case is not moot,” wrote Chief Deputy Attorney General Randall Gilmer. Attorneys for the prison system asked Boulware to rule on multiple challenges Floyd has raised regarding the Department of Corrections’ execution protocol. Floyd has chal...

Nevada prosecutors have failed to meet a deadline to obtain a death warrant to execute Zane Floyd before its supply of a key lethal-injection drug expires, indefinitely extending the near 16-year pause between executions in the state. With Nevada law requiring two-week notice of an execution, Clark County prosecutors had until February 13, 2022, to obtain a warrant if they were to attempt to execute Floyd before the state’s supply of 50 ketamine vials expires on February 28. They did not do so. Prosecutors had been pressing U.S. District Court Judge Richard Boulware II to issue an expedited ruling in Floyd’s federal-court challenge to the constitutionality of Nevada’s never-before-tried execution protocol so they could execute Floyd by the drug’s use-by date. Citing delays by the state in providing critical information about the protocol, Boulware declined. Nevada’s execution protocol allows for executions with any of eight different untested drug combinations, all of which include k...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The two doctors enlisted by Nevada prison officials to oversee an execution by an end-of-February deadline don’t want to be publicly identified and are no longer being considered, state officials told a federal judge. After U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II said he wanted to see the credentials of medical personnel who might attend Zane Michael Floyd’s lethal injection, two emergency medical technicians also withdrew their names, court documents show. “I will continue to attempt to locate qualified individuals,” William Gittere, deputy Nevada Department of Corrections operations director, said in a Jan. 27 written declaration to the judge. Gittere told Boulware last week he believed the attending physicians and EMTs don’t ever want to be publicly identified. “Providing information such as specialty or education would be identifiable factors in the small community of Ely, Nevada,” Gittere said in the court filing. Nevada’s execution chamber is at Ely State Prison,...

State corrections officials told a federal judge last week that they’re quickly running out time before a crucial lethal injection drug proposed for use in the execution of death row inmate Zane Floyd will expire. Last Friday, Nevada Department of Corrections Director Charles Daniels said in federal court that his chief concern with carrying out the execution is that the necessary drugs would expire before the state could proceed with its execution plan. His testimony followed days of hearings last week, during which medical experts called by the state made the case that the state’s proposed drug cocktail, never before used in carrying out a death sentence, would result in a painless death for Floyd. “My understanding is that it would be less painful than other methods,” said Daniel Buffington, a clinical pharmacologist who works at the University of South Florida. “It would reduce the individual's anxiety… It would be quick.” Last week’s hearings before U.S. District Court Judge R...

Nevada prosecutors have asked a federal judge to expedite a decision on the constitutionality of the state’s execution process, saying accelerated review is necessary if the state is to execute Zane Floyd before its supply of a questionably obtained lethal-injection drug expires on February 28, 2022. On November 5, 2021, Chief Deputy Nevada Attorney General Randall Gilmer told U.S. District Court Judge Richard Boulware II that the state’s supply of the anesthetic ketamine, one of the drugs in Nevada’s never-before-used execution protocol will expire at the end of February and that Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) officials “have no reasonable belief that we’ll be able to purchase additional drugs.” “We need to continue to expedite this case,” Gilmer said. After previously receiving a letter from Hikma Pharmaceuticals informing the state that the drug manufacturer would not sell its medicines to NDOC for executions, NDOC officials on May 26, 2021 obtained 50 vials of the company’...

It’s Time To Declare That America’s Experiment With Lethal Injection Has Failed Oklahoma put John Marion Grant to death last week, resuming executions after a six-year hiatus. Grant had been sentenced for the killing of a cafeteria worker in 1998 at the Dick Conner Correctional Center in Hominy, Oklahoma, where he was serving a 130-year sentence for numerous armed robberies. A horrible crime with a gruesome aftermath. Grant’s execution was horribly botched. It was anything but the antiseptic, hospital-like procedure that lethal injection is sometimes imagined to be. His is the latest in a long string of lethal injections gone wrong and yet another reminder that what was once thought to be this country’s most humane execution method is now its most problematic. Lethal injection was first seriously considered as a method of execution by the state of New York in the late 19th century. After a series of badly botched hangings the state created a commission and charged it to find a better...