Crime

On Friday the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case brought by 3 men on Oklahoma’s death row. They don’t want to die by the same lethal injection method that resulted in the botched execution of Clayton Lockett last April. A new drug combination, including the sedative midazolam, failed to take effect on Lockett, leading to […]

Nation

Attorneys for a mentally challenged man sentenced to death for killing a sheriff deputy argue that he received poor defense from his previous lawyer, who was intoxicated throughout his trial. Robert Wayne Holsey (pictured) is scheduled to die via lethal injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday, the Huffington Post reports. A jury convicted Holsey of fatally shooting Baldwin County deputy […]

Nation

Shocking Number Of Innocent People Sentenced To Death, Study Finds More than 4 percent of inmates sentenced to death in the United States are probably innocent, according to a study published Monday that sent shock waves across the anti-death penalty community. What the researchers call a “conservative estimate” about the number of wrongfully convicted death […]

Nation

Ray Jasper (pictured), a Death Row inmate in Texas scheduled for execution in two weeks, has written a lengthy letter from prison where he blasts the justice system and the specter of racial disparity. Jasper, who was a young rap artist at the time, was accused of the brutal robbing and killing of a recording studio […]

The practice of capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is one of the most-heavily contended social issues in America and abroad.  There have been many cases involving African Americans that question the racial fairness of the death penalty; most recently, the execution of inmate Troy Davis inspired similar debate.  A report from The […]

Crime

Marcus Robinson, a convicted killer, was removed from death row in North Carolina after a judge ruled that racial bias tainted his trial, the BBC reports. SEE ALSO: Polygamy Roots Could Hurt Romney Under North Carolina’s “Racial Justice Act” (RJA), Robinson’s lawyers cited a Michigan State University study which revealed that, on average, qualified Black […]

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a Texas death row inmate who won a last-minute reprieve from the high court in September. The justices on Monday turned away the appeal of Duane Buck, who wanted them to consider whether race played an improper role in his sentencing. See Also: […]

NAACP Joins The Fight To Save Troy Davis ATLANTA— Supporters of a high-profile death row inmate were making a last-ditch effort Monday to stop his execution for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer, asking the Georgia pardons board to grant clemency the 42-year-old who insists, along with others, that he is innocent. The […]

ATLANTA — The video camera that recorded the execution of a Georgia death row inmate did more than give attorneys an account of the man’s reaction to a new lethal injection drug. Death penalty experts say it could also lead to a flurry of new legal moves seeking more public access to secretive death chambers. […]

Houston, Texas–   A Texas man who was exonerated after serving 18 years in prison has been denied compensation because of a legal glitch.  Exonerated Death Row inmate Anthony Graves will be denied compensation because the word “Innocence,” was not used in the document ordering his release, his attorney Katherine Scardino said. RELATED: 25 reasons we […]

Philadelphia (AP) – A federal appeals court is hearing arguments concerning the sentence of death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal (moo-MEE’-ah AH’-boo jah-MAHL’). Hundreds of Abu-Jamal supporters gathered outside the federal courthouse in Philadelphia as the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday over instructions given during his 1982 trial. The U.S. Supreme Court […]

JARRATT, Va. — The first woman executed in the United States in five years was put to death in Virginia on Thursday for arranging the killings of her husband and a stepson over a $250,000 insurance payment. Teresa Lewis, 41, died by injection at 9:13 p.m. Thursday, authorities said. She became the first woman executed […]