Earlier this month, Amnesty International published its annual report, Death Sentences and Executions 2017. The report details the 39% decrease in the use of the death penalty worldwide since 2015 and highlights nations which continue to violate international law. At least 993 executions in 23 countries were carried out in 2017. China excluded, Iran, Saudi Arabia, […]
Category: capital punishment
Earlier this month, Amnesty International released its annual global report, “Death Sentences and Executions 2015.” As the name indicates, the report covers the judicial use of the death penalty throughout the world from January to December 2015. At least 1,634 people were put to death worldwide in 2015, which 573 more executions than documented in […]
Late last night, starting around 10:50 PM and lasting until after midnight, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee considered testimony on House Bill 1703, the death penalty repeal bill by State Representative Jessica Farrar. Representatives Alma Allen and Lon Burnam co-authored the bill. Rep. Farrar addressed three major flaws of the death penalty: the risk […]
On April 16, 2013, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee considered House Bill 2458, which seeks to prohibit the imposition of a death sentence or execution under any judgment that was sought or obtained on the basis of race. TCADP Executive Director Kristin Houlé testified in support of the bill in front of the committee, as […]
Amnesty International has released its annual report on death sentences and executions for 2012. Worldwide, 682 people were executed this past year, compared to 680 in 2011. Sentencing fell from 1,923 death sentences in 63 countries in 2011 to 1,722 in 58 countries in 2012. Amnesty International asserts that the global trend is towards abolition, […]
Last night, February 21, 2013, the State of Texas executed Carl Blue for the 1994 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Carmen Richards-Sanders, in Bryan. It was the first execution to take place in Texas this year and the third nationwide. The State of Georgia also carried out an execution last night, putting Andrew Allen Cook to death for the […]
According to TCADP’s new report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2012: The Year in Review, more than half of all new death sentences were imposed in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex this year, while no new death sentences were imposed in Harris County for the third time in five years.
Thirty years ago today, December 7, 1982, the State of Texas officially resumed executions, putting Charlie Brooks to death for the 1976 murder of David Gregory. That was also the nation’s first execution by lethal injection, a new method concocted by a legislator and former chief medical examiner in Oklahoma. Reverend Carroll Pickett, who served […]