Death Penalty News

Harris County district judge recommends compassionate release for Clarence Jordan A 1977 convenience store robbery that resulted in a clerk’s death landed Clarence Jordan on Texas Death Row, where he remained for decades even though he was declared incompetent for execution. On Monday, a judge recommended that the disabled man be released.  Harris County District Court Judge Katherine Thomas resentenced Jordan to life with the possibility of parole and suggested that he be considered for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Medically Recommended Intensive Supervision program, also known as compassionate release.

SPARTANBURG — A 59-year-old man sentenced to death for killing a state trooper in Greenville County in 2000 can’t be executed because of a mental illness that’s left him incoherent and believing he’s immortal, a Circuit Court judge has ruled. John Richard Wood is the first condemned inmate in South Carolina found not competent to be executed since the state restarted capital punishment in September 2024. The seven executions since then include three men who chose to die by firing squad — the latest in November. Wood, convicted 24 years ago, was among death row inmates in line to receive a death warrant after exhausting their regular appeals.

The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Thursday that Clarence Jordan’s punishment was unconstitutional  A death sentence handed down by a Harris County jury in 1978 was overturned Thursday by the Court of Criminal Appeals.  Clarence Jordan, 70, has been on Texas Death Row for almost 50 years, serving out one of the longest death sentences in the nation while suffering from intellectual disabilities and schizophrenia, his attorney told the Houston Press. 

A March 9, 2026, com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing for Andre Thomas, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Texas, has been post­poned to an unspec­i­fied date because of con­cerns that Mr. Thomas is too men­tal­ly ill to be trans­port­ed to his com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing and he could not be re-exam­ined by the State’s expert. Mr. Thomas was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in April 2023; how­ev­er, his exe­cu­tion date was with­drawn in March 2023 , cit­ing con­cerns with his severe men­tal ill­ness (SMI) and com­pe­ten­cy to face execution.

Masanori Aoki, now 34, stabbed two women who were taking a walk in the city of Nakano, then shot two policemen with a hunting rifle A Japanese court has sentenced to death a man who killed four people in a shooting and stabbing attack in 2023, rejecting the defence's argument that he has schizophrenia. Masanori Aoki, now 34, stabbed two women who were taking a walk in the city of Nakano and then shot two policemen - who arrived at the scene after receiving an emergency call - with a hunting rifle. Gun violence is rare in Japan, where strict firearms laws are in place. Even rarer is the shooting of multiple police officers. The last such incident happened more than 30 years ago.

The scheduled execution of an Alabama Death Row inmate will not go forward next week as the state waits for the completion of a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. A judge last month stayed the Aug. 21 execution of David Lee Roberts until a mental evaluation could be conducted to see if Roberts is competent to be executed.  The Alabama Department of Corrections said Friday that the report will not be completed by the scheduled Aug. 21 execution date.

Passing a law that permit a court to declare someone like Scott Panetti permanently incompetent would allow the seriously mentally ill to be removed from death row and receive psychiatric treatment.  Scott Panetti, whose Supreme Court case protects the seriously mentally ill from execution, died of natural causes on death row in Texas. Texas spent 30 years attempting to execute Panetti, despite his schizophrenia diagnosis and documented mental illness. The Supreme Court ruled in Panetti v. Quarterman that a death sentence cannot be carried out if the person lacks a rational understanding of the execution's reason.

Roberts was convicted of a 1992 murder and sentenced to death, despite the jury's recommendation for life imprisonment. His lawyers and activists argue he suffers from severe mental illness, citing family history and documented psychosis. Alabama’s next execution is temporarily on pause in order to assess if the inmate in question is mentally competent enough to be put to death. David Lee Roberts, a now 59-year-old who was convicted of the 1992 murder of Annetra Jones, was set to be executed by nitrogen gas on Aug. 21 as of June 2025.

A state judge has stayed an upcoming execution in Alabama to evaluate whether the man is too mentally ill to be put to death. The judge temporarily stayed the Aug. 21 execution of David Lee Roberts until it can be established whether he has a “rational understanding” of what is to happen to him. “Or similarly put, the issue is whether the petitioner’s concept of reality is so impaired that he cannot grasp the execution’s meaning and the purpose or the link between his crime and its punishment,” Marion County Circuit Judge Talmage Lee Carter wrote in the July 10 order.

Scott Panetti died on Texas’ death row at the end of May 2025 after 30 years in prison. He became well-known for the role his case played in clar­i­fy­ing the legal stan­dard for deter­min­ing when defen­dants are com­pe­tent to face exe­cu­tion — prece­dent that con­tin­ues to shape court decisions nationwide. Mr. Panetti’s severe men­tal ill­ness man­i­fest­ed in his late teens, lead­ing to more than a dozen psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal­iza­tions through the 1980s and ear­ly 1990s. His doc­u­ment­ed con­di­tions includ­ed schiz­o­phre­nia, para­noid delu­sions, and audi­to­ry hal­lu­ci­na­tions. Medical records from mul­ti­ple facil­i­ties, includ­ing Kerrville State Hospital, detailed his elab­o­rate delu­sion­al beliefs, includ­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and the devel­op­ment of multiple personalities.

If Joseph Corcoran had been sen­tenced to death just a few miles to the east, across the bor­der in Ohio instead of in Fort Wayne, Indiana, it’s like­ly that a court would have barred his exe­cu­tion. Ohio law pre­vents a per­son with a seri­ous men­tal ill­ness (SMI) at the time of their crime, defined as schiz­o­phre­nia, schizoaf­fec­tive dis­or­der, bipo­lar dis­or­der, or delu­sion­al dis­or­der, from being put to death. 

Indiana carries out first execution in 15 years An Indiana man convicted in the 1997 killing of four people including his brother and his sister’s fiancé was put to death on Wednesday in the state’s first execution in 15 years. Joseph Corcoran, 49, was pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m. CST at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, according to the Indiana Department of Correction, making it the 24th execution in the U.S. this year. He was scheduled to be executed with the powerful sedative pentobarbital, although officials did not mention that drug in their statement.

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. 

In the coming months, a slew of legal and procedural processes are expected to play out ahead of Joseph Corcoran’s scheduled execution on Dec. 18. Amid a surge of executions being carried out across the country, Indiana’s first death row inmate in more than a decade is scheduled to meet the same fate before the end of the year, barring a final act of clemency at the discretion of Gov. Eric Holcomb. Joseph Corcoran, who killed four people in 1997, was ordered by the Indiana Supreme Court last month to be executed Dec. 18.

After death row inmate Joseph Corcoran challenged the state’s motion for an execution date to be set, counsel at the attorney general’s office are attempting to poke holes in Corcoran’s legal arguments and pressing for the Indiana Supreme Court to grant the execution request. Earlier this month, Corcoran’s lawyers said in court filing that he is “unquestionably seriously mentally ill” and therefore should not be subject to the death penalty.

Since Randall Mays was sentenced to death in 2008 for the murder of two sheriff’s deputies, his lawyers have argued his intellectual disability exempts him from execution. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals re-sentenced a 64-year-old man on death row to life in prison without parole on Wednesday after a state expert confirmed in trial court that he is intellectually disabled.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The lethal injection of an Oklahoma man scheduled to be executed next month has been paused for 100 days so that a hearing can be held to determine if he’s mentally competent enough to be executed. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals issued the stay of execution on Dec. 22 for James Ryder, 61. Ryder was scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Feb. 1 for his role in the 1999 slayings of a mother and son in Pittsburg County after a property dispute.

Scott Panetti was deemed incompetent for execution. What does this mean for other prisoners? A federal judge has declared that Scott Panetti, a longtime resident of Texas’ death row, is incompetent for execution due to the severity of his mental illness. The decision comes more than 15 years after the U.S. Supreme Court determined—also in Panetti’s case—that the Eighth Amendment bars the state from executing someone who doesn’t understand the reason for their execution. 

On September 26, 2023, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced that he would not seek the death penalty in the case of slain Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer. “If I thought that the death penalty was going to stop people from committing brutal murders, I would seek it. But we know that it won’t,” said Gascón at a news conference, “The reality is that the death penalty doesn’t serve as a deterrent, and the death penalty does not bring people back. …What I can assure you is that we’re going to do everything within our legal power to make sure that this defendant never is out of prison.”

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas death row inmate with a long history of mental illness, and who tried to call Jesus Christ and John F. Kennedy as trial witnesses, is not competent to be executed, a federal judge ruled. Scott Panetti, 65, who has been on death row for nearly 30 years for fatally shooting his in-laws in front of his wife and young children, has contended that Texas wants to execute him to cover up incest, corruption, sexual abuse and drug trafficking he has uncovered. He has also claimed the devil has “blinded” Texas and is using the state to kill him to stop him from preaching and “saving souls.”