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WASHINGTON (AP) — Black people have been overrepresented on death rows across the United States and killers of Black people are less likely to face the death penalty than people who kill white people, a new report found. The report from the Death Penalty Information Center is a history lesson in how lynchings and executions […]

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DENVER (AP) — Colorado is set to become the 22nd U.S. state to abolish the death penalty after lawmakers on Wednesday approved a repeal bill that Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has pledged to sign into law. Passage had been virtually certain with Democrats holding a substantial majority in the House — even with several Democratic […]

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s prison agency agreed to improve death row conditions under a settlement announced Monday of a federal lawsuit that called the inmates’ living standards degrading and inhumane. Lawyers for the inmates who sued said the agreement provides people on death row with at least 42½ hours a week out of their cell, daily […]

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HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas inmate who says he’s intellectually disabled is set to be executed Wednesday evening for fatally stabbing his two stepsons during an attack more than 12 years ago in their North Texas home that also killed his wife. Robert Sparks, 45, is facing lethal injection for the September 2007 slayings […]

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HOUSTON (AP) — A federal appeals court granted a stay of execution Wednesday to a Texas inmate just one day before he was scheduled to die for the fatal shooting of a 23-year-old woman during a carjacking in Houston. In an 18-page opinion filed Thursday, a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit […]

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A recent Kansas Supreme Court ruling declaring that the state constitution protects access to abortion opened the door to a new legal attack on the death penalty. Attorneys for five of the 10 men on death row in Kansas argue that the abortion decision means the state’s courts can enforce the […]

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POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. (AP) — Chris Parks is ready to stop checking the number of days since his brother was murdered. For more than two decades he’s periodically tracked how many days go by before the two men convicted of killing him are executed. On Thursday, when the second is scheduled to die, the days […]

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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire is the latest state to repeal its death penalty, as the state Senate had enough votes to override Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto. The repeal takes effect immediately. The 16-8 vote Thursday was the necessary two-thirds majority to override. The House narrowly voted last week to override Sununu’s veto. New […]

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HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — An avowed racist who orchestrated one of the most gruesome hate crimes in U.S. history was executed Wednesday in Texas for the dragging death of a black man. John William King, who was white, received lethal injection for the slaying nearly 21 years ago of James Byrd Jr., who was chained […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris says there should be a federal moratorium on executions. The senator from California discussed the matter on National Public Radio on Thursday, a day after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California granted reprieves to 737 death row inmates and signed an executive order placing a moratorium on […]

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HOUSTON (AP) — Texas‘ attorney general is pushing to keep an inmate on death row despite prosecutors and defense lawyers agreeing that the man is intellectually disabled and shouldn’t be executed. The state attorney general’s office asked to take over death row inmate Bobby James Moore’s case on Wednesday, the Houston Chronicle reported. The request […]

According to ABC News, the state of Washington’s Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty violates the state’s constitution. This decision was made after a study reportedly found, “black defendants were four-and-a-half times more likely to be sentenced to death than similarly-situated white defendants.” The decision reads,“the death penalty is invalid because it is […]