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Once Again, New Hampshire Almost Abolishes the Death Penalty

The New Hampshire legislature this spring passed S. 593, a bill to abolish the state’s death penalty, and, effective at the start of next year, replace it with mandatory life imprisonment without parole. On June 21, Gov. Christopher Sununu (R) vetoed the measure. Sununu’s veto message defended his state’s restraint with the death penalty: only

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Oklahoma Plans First U.S. Execution with Nitrogen Gas

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and Director of Corrections Joe Allbaugh on March 14 jointly announced the state plans to adopt an execution method never before used in the United States: asphyxiation by nitrogen gas. In 1977, Oklahoma’s medical examiner devised a multi-drug lethal injection protocol, as an alternative to electrocution or hanging. The state

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Louisiana Indigent Defendants Face Death Penalty Without Lawyers

The indigent defense crisis in Louisiana continues, but it is now taking a new and more ominous direction. To fund local public defenders, the state has taken $3 million from capital defenders, leaving at least 11 Louisiana defendants who are facing the death penalty without a lawyer. New Orleans Chief Defender Derwyn Bunton’s decision to

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Executions, Death Penalty Verdicts Stay Near Record-Low Levels

The year-end report for 2017, recently released by the Death Penalty Information Center, shows that the 23 executions carried out in 2017 remain near a record-low level. During the last 25 years, only the 20 executions carried out in 2016 were lower. Similarly, the figure of 39 death-penalty sentences expected to be handed down by

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Research Shows Waning Support for Death Penalty in U.S.

The Death Penalty Information Center has released a report highlighting significant changes in the number of executions in the United States in 2016. According to the report, there were 20 executions in the U.S. during calendar year 2016 – the lowest number in 25 years. Additionally, juries imposed fewer death sentences than in any year

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Georgia Executions Resume, Inmate’s Firing Squad Request Denied

The state of Georgia, which carried out the highest number of executions in the nation last year, putting nine convicted criminals to death, recorded its first for this year May 17 by administering a three-drug lethal injection protocol to J.W. Ledford Jr., a criminal who spent years appealing his convictions at various levels, and whose

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Executions in U.S. This Year Have Reached Multi-Decade Low

This year to date, nationwide executions are on a pace to reach their lowest level in 25 years. Capital punishments have been carried out only 15 times in 2016 and only twice since the start of May. If that rate persists through the remainder of this year, the nationwide total of 19 executions will be the

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Oregon Prisoner Wages Legal Fight to be Executed

By Prison Legal News

As previously reported in PLN, on November 22, 2011, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber imposed a moratorium on the death penalty for the remainder of his term in office. In doing so he canceled the scheduled execution of Gary Haugen, 50, who had waived his appeals and asked to be put to death. [See: PLN, Dec. 2012, p.47].

Haugen initially praised Governor Kitzhaber’s decision, saying the news was especially gratifying given that he had repeatedly criticized, at court appearances and in letters, some of the same flaws in capital punishment that Kitzhaber cited when imposing the moratorium, which the governor said was arbitrary, costly and “fails to meet basic standards of justice.”

Upon further reflection, however, Haugen’s praise and gratitude turned to spite. “I feel he’s a paper cowboy. He couldn’t pull the trigger,” Haugen said. Governor Kitzhaber “basically pulled a coward’s move” in granting the reprieve, he stated.

While Haugen said he agreed with the moratorium, he criticized the governor’s decision to temporarily stop executions without implementing reforms. “You’re not going to execute people, but you’re going to continue to allow people to litigate in a broken system?” he asked, referring to the 37 other prisoners who remain on Oregon’s death row, pursuing their appeals.

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Maryland Repeals Death Penalty

By Christopher Zoukis

On May 2, 2013, Maryland became the sixth state in six years to abolish the death penalty, and the 18th state – along with the District of Columbia – that has rejected capital punishment. Maryland is the first Southern state to forgo executions in nearly half a century, joining West Virginia, with its 1964 repeal, as the only states below the Mason-Dixon Line without capital punishment on the books. 

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, a Democrat who has been fighting the state’s death penalty with legislative efforts since 2007, and who signed the repeal bill, said in a press release, “Maryland has effectively eliminated a policy that is proven not to work. Evidence shows that the death penalty is not a deterrent, it cannot be administered without racial bias, and it costs three times as much as life in prison without parole.” He added, “Furthermore, there is no way to reverse a mistake if an innocent person is put to death.”

The death penalty repeal, which goes into effect on October 1, 2013, does not explicitly apply to the five men currently on Maryland’s death row. The state’s last execution took place in 2005 when Governor Robert Ehrlich was in office. Present law allows the governor to commute the condemned prisoners’ sentences to life without parole, and O’Malley has said he will consider doing so on a case-by-case basis.

Kirk Bloodsworth, a Maryland man who was the first person in the U.S. to be freed from death row based on DNA evidence, attended the signing ceremony for the repeal bill. “Twenty-eight years ago I was sitting in a death row cell, and it became clear to me that we could execute an innocent man,” he stated. Bloodsworth, who was wrongly sentenced to death for the murder of a 9-year-old girl, said at a news conference, “No innocent person will ever be executed in this state again.”

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