All Articles: Death Penalty

State’s supply runs out after nine executions, it sues to have feds release impounded drugs The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has detained a shipment of approximately 1,000 vials of drugs intended for executions in Texas. After waiting for nearly a year and a half, Texas officials demanded an end to the delays, filing […]

While state lawmakers complete approval of a one-drug execution method, Californians voted not only to keep the death penalty on the books, but approved speeding up executions by limiting the appeals process. Californians rejected Proposition 62, which would have repealed the death penalty for persons found guilty of murder with special circumstances and replaced it […]

By Juan Haines A small number of prosecutors across the country are vigorously pursuing death sentences and, according to a new study, have done so without regard for fairness and accuracy. “These prosecutors are evidence that the application of the death penalty is — and always has been — less about the circumstances of the […]

By David Eugene Archer Sr. A contentious Justice Department policy that could speed up death-row executions is closer to taking effect, after a recent federal appeals court ruling. The opinion from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this March tossed a 2013 lawsuit brought by the Habeas Corpus Resource Center in California and the […]

By Charles David Henry California voters will decide again in November what to do with the death penalty. Two opposing initiatives with strong political and social ramifications will be on the ballot to abolish capital punishment or speed up executions. Details of the measures are listed in an Aug. 12 story by politifact.com. Proposition 62 […]

By Charles David Henry California is “home to the largest Death Row population in the Western Hemisphere,” according to a recent PolitiFact press release. According to public data, California’s Death Row has nearly 750 individuals condemned to die. That’s nearly twice as many as the next closest state, Florida at 388. UC Berkeley law professor Frank […]

By Charles David Henry Journalism Guild Writer The tiers of San Quentin’s Death Row have not been open to the public for more than five years. All of that changed in February. Alecia Reid from NBC’s San Francisco’s affiliate was one of the first reporters to recently see the current living conditions inside one of […]

Signatures are being solicited for two November ballot initiatives that would ask California voters to speed up executions or repeal the death penalty. One of the initiatives would require the state Supreme Court to rule on capital cases within five years. It would also limit death penalty appeals, set strict deadlines for filing appeals and […]

By Charles David Henry Journalism Guild Writer As the U.S. remains one of the five nations with the most executions in the world, critics opposing capital punishment are confronting the myths of its effectiveness. Matthew Rozsa, writer for Salon.com, claims the debate about the death penalty is “riddled with misinformation”; challenging these myths won’t just […]