Amnesty International recently released its annual Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions 2020, which updates key figures on the use of capital punishment worldwide. Overall, executions and death sentences dropped significantly worldwide in 2020. The United States continued to be the only Western country to carry out executions. While COVID-19 created notable obstacles for executions, […]
Category: death sentences
In this edition of our monthly newsletter, you’ll find updates on exonerations in Texas and nationwide, as well as a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning a conviction due to egregious racial bias in the jury selection process. We also mark the anniversary of the Court’s decision, Gregg v. Georgia, which paved the way for the resumption of executions in this country.
Death sentences remained near historic low levels in Texas in 2018, yet the state’s capital punishment system is still plagued by racial bias, geographical disparities, and fundamental unfairness, according to a new report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP). The number of death sentences and executions in 2018 was consistent with lower use of the death penalty in Texas over the last 10 years. New death sentences remained in the single digits for the ninth time in ten years, with Texas juries condemning seven individuals to death. All seven men sentenced to death in Texas in 2018 are people of color.
In this edition of our monthly e-newsletter, you’ll find information about executions and death sentences, photos from our 2018 Annual Conference, and announcements about upcoming events with Anthony Graves.
Executions and death sentences remained near-historic lows in 2017, according to a new report from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP). Texas executed only seven people in 2017, matching 2016 for the lowest number of executions in two decades, and jurors voted for death in only four cases. For the first time since 1985, Harris County was not responsible for any of this year’s executions.
Today, TCADP released its year-end report, Texas Death Penalty Developments in 2016: The Year in Review. The report provides in-depth information on new death sentences, executions, and stays; reduced sentences; judicial developments; public opinion; and other issues affecting the administration of justice in Texas.
Important decisions in two North Texas death penalty-related cases were announced last Friday: A State District Judge in Dallas determined that John Battaglia is mentally competent to be executed, while a Tarrant County jury imposed a new death sentence for the first time in more than two years.
Today, Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project released Part II of its report, Too Broken to Fix: An In-depth Look at America’s Outlier Death Penalty Counties, which provides an in-depth look at how the death penalty is operating in the handful of counties across the country that are still using it, including Dallas County, Texas.