Death Penalty News

Associated Press -- State lawmakers are circulating bipartisan legislation to restore capital punishment in Delaware. The legislation, expected to be introduced soon, specifies that the death penalty could not be imposed unless a jury, unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt, finds at least one aggravating circumstance that makes a crime eligible for capital punishment. Delaware’s Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty law unconstitutional in 2016 because it allowed judges too much discretion and did not require that a jury find unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant deserves execution.  That ruling came after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s similar death sentencing law. Democratic Gov. John Carney said Tuesday that he might sign a bill allowing capital punishment only if it was restricted to killers of law enforcement officials. Source: The Associated Press, Staff, May 15, 2019 ⚑ | Report an error, an omission,...

A bipartisan effort to repeal the death penalty fell short in the Washington Legislature this year. But a separate effort to overturn the state's capital punishment statute through the courts is ongoing. The constitutional challenge to the death penalty in Washington involves the case of Allen Eugene Gregory , 45, who was sentenced to die for the 1996 rape and murder of Geneine Harshfield in Tacoma. Gregory is one of three African-American men currently on Washington's death row. Citing a 2014 report by researchers at the University of Washington , Gregory's attorneys argue that black defendants in Washington are "more than four times as likely to be sentenced to death as other defendants." The researchers analyzed trial reports from more than 300 aggravated murder cases in Washington since 1981. They concluded that while race did not appear to influence whether prosecutors sought the death penalty, it was a factor in whether juries imposed a death ...

Delaware placed the remnants of its death penalty on the history shelves Tuesday when it modified the death sentences of two convicted murderers to life in prison.   Michael R. Manley and David D. Stevenson, both 43, were sentenced after years of legal battles fighting a conviction that brought the death sentence for killing a Macy's security officer in 1995.  "No, your honor," both men responded when asked by Superior Court Judge Paul R. Wallace if they had anything to say.  Manley and Stevenson were the last men in Delaware living under a state-imposed death sentence, which was done away with after the state's top court found its death penalty unconstitutional on Aug. 2, 2016. The state Supreme Court ruling came months after the nation's top court struck down Florida's law because it gave judges – and not juries – the final say to impose a death sentence.  Florida's law was similar to Delaware's law.  Manley and Stevenson were ...

Delaware Supreme Court “Delaware‘s current death penalty statute violates the Sixth Amendment role of the jury,” the state’s high court rules in a 3-2 decision striking down the entire death penalty law. WASHINGTON — Delaware’s death penalty law is unconstitutional in light of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year addressing the role of the jury in handing down death sentences, the state’s Supreme Court ruled in a split decision on Tuesday. The decision expresses “the majority‘s collective view that Delaware‘s current death penalty statute violates the Sixth Amendment role of the jury as set forth in Hurst [v. Florida]” — the January U.S. Supreme Court decision addressing the jury’s essential role in the sentencing phase of a death penalty trial. Specifically, the Delaware court found the statute to be unconstitutional because a judge, independent of the jury, can find “the existence of ‘any aggravating circumstance’” that would be required to impose a de...