According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), October saw the high­est month­ly exe­cu­tion total in Iran since 2007, when the orga­ni­za­tion began doc­u­ment­ing exe­cu­tions. There were at least 166 exe­cu­tions last month, bring­ing the year­ly total to 651 exe­cu­tions over the past 10 months. Of the October exe­cu­tions iden­ti­fied by IHRNGO, only 12%, or 20 exe­cu­tions, were report­ed by offi­cial sources. Eleven Baluch and nine Kurdish peo­ple were among those exe­cut­ed. The increase in num­ber of…

As vot­ers across the United States cast their bal­lots on elec­tion day, the Death Penalty Information Center’s July 2024 report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty, pro­vides valu­able con­text on the inter­sec­tion of pol­i­tics and the death…

On November 4, 2024, the United States Supreme Courts released its order in the case of Hamm v. Smith, 604 U.S. _​_​_​(2024). The peti­tion for cer­tio­rari, filed by the State of Alabama last year, involved a pris­on­er named Joseph Clifton Smith whose death sen­tence was vacat­ed in 2021 after a United States dis­trict court found he had intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Mr. Smith had tak­en five IQ tests, four of which placed his IQ in the low- to mid-70s, the range gen­er­al­ly accept­ed by experts to be…

Attorneys for South Carolina death row pris­on­er Richard Moore (pic­tured) filed a clemen­cy peti­tion with Governor Henry McMaster, ask­ing him to com­mute his sen­tence to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Mr. Moore has gar­nered sup­port from a wide range of indi­vid­u­als, includ­ing the for­mer direc­tor of South Carolina Department of Corrections Jon Ozmint. In a let­ter to Gov. McMaster, Mr. Ozmint writes about how Mr. Moore’s ​“sto­ry of redemp­tion” and good behav­ior will allow him to…

On October 24, 2024, the Kentucky Supreme Court denied a request by the Attorney General and the Kentucky Department of Corrections (KDOC) to remove an injunc­tion cur­rent­ly pro­hibit­ing exe­cu­tions in Kentucky. In 2010, a Franklin County Circuit judge ordered a tem­po­rary injunc­tion of all exe­cu­tions due to con­cerns regard­ing numer­ous aspects of Kentucky’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, includ­ing con­cerns about the men­tal sta­tus and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty sta­tus of death row pris­on­ers and the state’s…