- Alabama – State lawmakers took steps to change Alabama’s execution method from lethal injections to nitrogen hypoxia, Criminal Legal News reports. The change ended a lawsuit filed by eight Death Row prisoners who chose execution by nitrogen hypoxia over lethal injection.
- Arkansas – A trial judge dismissed all charges against former Death Row prisoner Rickey Dale Newman and set him free on Oct. 11. Newman spent nearly 17 years incarcerated following the February 2001 murder of a transient woman, the Death Penalty Information Center reports. He became the 160th person since 1973 to be exonerated after a wrongful conviction and death sentence.
- Baltimore – James “J.J.” Owens received $9 million last May for being wrongfully convicted of the 1988 rape and murder of a woman. DNA evidence exonerated Owens in 2006, and he was released from prison in 2008. After 10 years of legal wrangling, the case finally settled, Criminal Legal News reports.
- California – Los Angeles County’s jail population is three times larger than San Diego’s; however, the death rate in San Diego jails is higher, Criminal Legal News reports. Between 2007 and 2012, 60 prisoners died in San Diego’s jails, including 16 suicides. None of the 10 largest jails in the state had a higher death rate.
- Lincoln County, Ore. – Bradley Thomas’ family collected $2.85 million to settle a wrongful death suit, Prison Legal News reports. Thomas, 55 years old, was mentally ill when he died of dehydration in a county jail. The lawsuit claimed that jailers violated his civil rights when they were “deliberately indifferent” to his serious medical and psychiatric needs following his arrest in 2015.
- Little Rock, Ark. – The state’s highest court decided 4-3 to strike down the state’s death-penalty mental competency law. The ruling held that it is a due process violation for prison directors exclusively to decide if a Death Row prisoner is competent for execution, the Death Penalty Information Center reports.
- Louisiana – While lawyers litigate the state’s lethal injection protocol, a federal judge halted the execution of the state’s 71 Death Row prisoners, until at least July 18, 2019, Criminal Legal News reports.
- Iowa – The state’s Supreme Court adopted and announced a new rule that takes claims of actual innocence as freestanding claims under the post-conviction-relief statute, regardless of whether the applicant knowingly and voluntarily pleaded guilty. The new rule overturns prior cases that had barred relief under those facts, Criminal Legal News reports.
- New York – Herman Bell received a sentence of 25 years to life in 1971 for the murder of two NYPD officers. He spent 46 years in prison. He was denied parole seven times before granted parole and released in April 2018. Now 70 years old, he’s long held that he was a political prisoner, Prison Legal News reports.
- Oklahoma –Two former Death Row prisoners agreed to a $3.15 million settlement in their federal civil rights lawsuits against their prosecutor and the State of Oklahoma, Prison Legal News reports. Yancy L. Douglas, 43, and Paris Lapriest Powell, 44, were exonerated in 2009 of the drive-by shooting of a 14-year-old girl in 1993.
- Philadelphia – On his third day in office, District Attorney Larry Krasner fired 31 career prosecutors, Criminal Legal News reports. He instructed the remaining prosecutors to stop insisting on cash bail for minor offenses, such as possessing marijuana.
- South Dakota – Rodney Scott Berget, 56, was executed Nov. 11 for killing 63-year-old corrections officer Ronald Johnson in 2011 during an escape attempt with another inmate, reports Newsweek.
- Tennessee – The Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy published a review of the application of capital punishment in the state. The review examined all the first-degree murder cases prosecuted in the last 40 years and concluded that the system is a “cruel lottery” and does not rectify the deficiencies that led the U.S. Supreme Court to declare its death penalty laws unconstitutional in 1972,” Criminal Legal News reports.
- Texas – Of the 26,000 guards employed in the state’s 104 prisons, 28 percent quit in 2017, an increase from last year’s 22.8 percent turnover rate, state reports show. The high rate of attrition was followed by a failure to fill 3,930 open positions, resulting in a vacancy rate of 15.22 percent in April, Prison Legal News reports.
- USA– A survey was conducted for the Vera Institute of Justice between Feb. 27 and March 5, found a majority of Americans, 67 percent overall, believe that building more prisons and jails does not reduce crime, Prison Legal News reports. In addition, 62 percent, don’t believe that more prisons would improve the quality of life in their communities.