Death Penalty News

The use of the death penalty has risen sharply in the United States, with more executions in 2025 than any year since 2009. It is a cruel and unjust development. In theory, the death penalty is reserved for “the worst of the worst.” In practice, it is very different. People who are executed for their crimes are disproportionately poor or intellectually disabled and often lacked good lawyers. They are also more likely to be sentenced to death if they have been convicted of killing a white person. Anthony Boyd, who maintained his innocence until Alabama executed him last year at age 54, had an inexperienced court-appointed lawyer and was convicted on disputed eyewitness testimony. Charles Flores, 56, has spent 27 years on death row in Texas for a murder conviction based solely on unreliable testimony from a hypnotized witness. Robert Roberson, who has autism, remains on death row there despite having been convicted on now-debunked evidence that he had shaken his daughter to death.

A man facing execution next month for the murder his girlfriend’s mother asked state officials Monday to spare his life, saying he is not the same person he was when he killed the woman after a day of drinking and using drugs.

Pye was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 killing of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. ATLANTA — A Georgia man should not be executed because he is intellectually disabled and feels remorse for killing his former girlfriend three decades ago, his lawyers wrote in seeking clemency for him.

Pakistan holds one of the largest death rows globally ISLAMABAD: Pakistan holds one of the largest death rows globally, with 6,039 prisoners awaiting execution nationwide, concentrated primarily in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.  Among them, 99% are male, while 62 are women.

Most of planet Earth stopped carrying out executions long ago. Some of the few nations that still do so are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia — and the United States of America. Yet even here, most states have stopped killing their own people by either law or practice. Only five states have done so this year, according to new numbers from the Death Penalty Information Center. Florida is one of them. Our colleagues in killing are Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

Harris County, Texas, is the death penalty capital of the country. In most cases resulting in a death sentence in the past 20 years, appointed defense lawyers failed to uncover potentially life-saving evidence, the report found. Harris County, Texas, has executed more people than anywhere else in the country. In most Harris County cases ending in a death sentence over the previous 20 years, defense lawyers failed to find and present compelling evidence that could have kept their clients off of death row, according to a 2-part report published on Monday by the Wren Collective, a group of former public defenders who do criminal justice research and policy.

As Malaysia releases drug offenders from death row, its close neighbour Singapore has re-started executions for drug offences, with the government saying its policy is working. But drug reform advocates have a different view. Nazira Lajim (pictured, pre-execution photoshoot) remembers her brother looking healthy the night before he was hanged. "He told me 'never mind; it's my fate'," she recalls. "He was very strong. He kept smiling. He was 64 years old."

  Execution of Emmanuel Littlejohn Stayed in Oklahoma Before November 2, 2023 Emmanuel Littlejohn was scheduled to be executed at 10 a.m. local time on Thursday, November 2, 2023. The execution, which would have taken place inside the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, will not take place as scheduled. It has been stayed and is awaiting a new execution date.  51-year-old Emmanuel was convicted of murdering Kenneth Meers on June 20, 1992, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. For the last 29 years, Emmanuel has resided on death row in Oklahoma.

I’ve long spoken up against the death penalty, a punishment so cruel, inhumane, and riddled with error and malice that it should have no place in our modern world. Its proponents claim it deters crime, yet nothing could be further from the truth – and study after study refutes that claim. Look anywhere in the 55 countries that retain the practice: the death penalty doesn’t make communities safer, has no noticeable impact on crime rates, whilst wasting precious resources that could be better used elsewhere.  

In July 2023, the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) released its report and position statement on mental health and the death penalty.  The issues addressed in the report include: the imposition of the death penalty on prisoners with mental illness or developmental and intellectual disabilities, the overrepresentation of death-sentenced prisoners who have been socioeconomically marginalized, and the role of psychiatrists in death penalty cases.

The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution protects us from “cruel and unusual punishment” by the government. This seemingly simple language raises a host of complicated questions. “Cruel” by what standard? “Unusual” in what sense? Does this provision have a fixed meaning? Or does its meaning change over time? History offers a few clues. In 1689, England adopted a Declaration of Rights that prohibited “cruel and unusual punishments.” Some of the Founders argued that we needed a similar provision in our own Bill of Rights.

SINGAPORE: Presidential candidate Tan Kin Lian said "it is okay" to be merciful to drug mules facing the death penalty in Singapore, and that he does not believe granting clemency will lead to a flood of drug traffickers. He said the President has to take the Cabinet’s advice on such issues, but he would give them his “private advice”. The former NTUC Income chief executive was answering questions from members of the National University of Singapore Society at Kent Ridge Guild House on Saturday (Aug 26).

El programa de Asistencia Jurídica resultó producente para los connacionales en el país vecino A través de un comunicado, la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE) dio a conocer que, gracias al programa de “Asistencia Jurídica en Casos de Pena Capital en Estados Unidos”, se logró evitar o revertir la pena de muerte en 126 casos dentro del país vecino en lo que va del presente sexenio, destacando una de las mayores cifras desde su implementación.

The death penalty is inhumane and violates the fundamental right to life. Physician involvement enables this continuing abuse of human rights and undermines the four pillars of medical ethics—beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. “The death penalty is, in our common experience, an atavistic relic from the past that should be shed in the 21st century”, said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk in April, 2023, during the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council. The death penalty has existed since the Code of Hammurabi, with its history seeped in politics and discrimination. Physicians have been involved throughout this history. In the eyes of the public, the medicalisation and very involvement of physicians renders execution palatable, eroding any natural sense of abhorrence. Yet capital punishment is ineffective as a deterrent and morally wrong. At its core, execution is a barbaric practice that goes against the ethical foundation of the physician's rol...

Virginia killed more than 1,300 people who were convicted of serious crimes before deciding, in 2021, that it would join 22 other states that abolished the death penalty. Before that time, prisoners on death row met with spiritual counselors like minister Russ Ford. “These people did some horrible things," he says, "but there was such a pattern of poverty and abuse, mental illness, organic brain damage – like alcohol fetal syndrome. Drug addiction certainly played a part in many of their lives.” Ford grew up in a family that did not believe in capital punishment. “Dad saw it as a racial issue. Black people were getting it pretty hard and poor people, so that had influenced me. After I witnessed the first execution I was adamantly opposed.” He knew electrocution was not an exact science. “We saw a man who was hit with it, and then 15 minutes later he was still alive! You know they say they don’t feel any pain, but that’s just not true!”

The case of a boxer who has won a retrial after 53 years on death row highlights concerns over the country’s human rights record Just 1 day inside prison probably seems a long time for an innocent man. Imagine then what it feels to be on death row for 53 years for a crime you haven’t committed. Iwao Hakamada, a Japanese ex-boxer, might know. Earlier this month the high court in Tokyo ordered a retrial for the 87-year-old, who has languished behind bars for more than 5 decades after a conviction his lawyers say was based on a forced confession and fabricated evidence. The case has again shone a spotlight on a darker side of Japan. Scratch lightly at the veneer of exquisite aesthetics, etiquette, and sleek modernism and you become aware of something more sinister – hinted at by the excessive deference and rigid hierarchies. Nowhere is it more apparent than in the country’s criminal justice system.

An in-depth piece in the Huffington Post examines Harris County’s (Texas) system for providing representation to those facing the death penalty who cannot afford their own attorney. The process is explored through the story of Obel Cruz-Garcia, a prisoner on Texas’ death row. The author described his case: “Like most people who end up on death row, Cruz-Garcia could not afford to hire a lawyer for the resource-intensive process of a capital trial, and Harris County, Texas, doesn’t offer public defenders in death penalty cases. Instead, he was appointed a private defense lawyer named R.P. ‘Skip’ Cornelius, who made a living billing the county to represent more than 100 indigent clients a year. Cornelius was paid a flat fee to represent Cruz-Garcia, regardless of how much time he spent working on the case.”

Many believe capital punishment is needed to deter people from committing serious crimes though critics say there is no evidence for this. India refuses to abolish capital punishment but the number of executions is low. In February, a special court in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India handed down death sentences to seven men convicted of being "Islamic State" (IS) operatives.   

The murder case is the latest reminder that the nation's death rows are places often populated by poor Black men. Alex Murdaugh received two consecutive life sentences on Friday after he was convicted of committing crimes that might well have led to a death sentence in South Carolina and other death penalty states. From beginning to end, his case put opponents of capital punishment in a bind. They could applaud the prosecution’s decision not to seek such a sentence, but it is hard to ignore the fact that that the decision provided yet another example of racial and class privilege in the death penalty system . The Murdaugh case is the latest reminder that death row, as the Los Angeles Times once put it , “isn't a high-income neighborhood.” Throughout U.S. history, it has been a place heavily populated by poor Black men .

California's San Quentin prison houses the state's only death row for male inmates. Death row for men and women will soon be dismantled. SAN FRANCISCO — California this week pushed ahead with controversial efforts to dismantle the largest death row system in America.