DPIC: Death Sentences and Executions Remain Near Historic Lows Amid Growing Concerns about Fairness and Innocence

President Biden and North Carolina Governor Consider Commutations of Death Rows to Remedy Systemic Problems

Four States Responsible for 76% of Executions

(Washington, D.C.) This year marked the tenth consecutive year where fewer than 30 people were executed (25) and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death (26), while high profile cases of death-sentenced people attracted significant attention and new, unexpected supporters. At this writing, widespread coalitions of people with diverse perspectives are publicly urging President Biden and North Carolina Governor Cooper to consider commuting the death sentences of prisoners to remedy longstanding concerns about systemic problems with the application of the death penalty.

“In 2024, we saw people with credible evidence of innocence set for execution, followed by extraordinary levels of public frustration and outrage. Several high-profile cases fueled new concerns about whether the death penalty can be used fairly and accurately. A new poll also predicts a steady decline of support in the future, showing for the first time that a majority of adults aged 18 to 43 now oppose the death penalty,” said Robin M. Maher, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI).

Ten states -- Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas -- sentenced people to death in 2024. Just four states -- Alabama, California, Florida, and Texas -- account for the majority (20) of new death sentences this year. Florida imposed the highest number of new death sentences, with seven. Texas imposed six new death sentences, while Alabama imposed four, California imposed three, while Arizona, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee each had one new death sentence.

About one third of the 26 new death sentences were imposed by non-unanimous juries: six in Florida and three in Alabama. In 2023, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation reducing the number of votes needed to recommend a death sentence from unanimous to just 8 out of 12 jurors. Observers accurately predicted that this change would result in an increase in Florida death sentences. At least ten votes are required for Alabama juries to recommend a death sentence, while every other state requires unanimity. Non-unanimous juries have been criticized for silencing minority voices on a jury, increasing the chances that an innocent person will be convicted, and undermining public confidence in the death penalty system.

Nine states -- Alabama (6), Florida (1), Georgia (1), Indiana (1), Missouri (4), Oklahoma (4), South Carolina (2), Texas (5), and Utah (1) -- carried out executions in 2024. Four states – Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas – were responsible for 76 percent of executions.

Executions resumed for the first time in decades in Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah after elected officials announced they had secured execution drugs or approved new methods. Idaho attempted to resume executions this year after a twelve-year hiatus but called off the botched execution of Thomas Creech when the execution team was unable to establish an IV line after an hour of attempts.

Public support for the death penalty in 2024 remains at a five-decade low (53%), and polling reveals significant and growing generational differences, as well as rising disapproval among people ages 43 and younger. Also, a growing number of conservative lawmakers and elected prosecutors publicly supported prisoners with compelling evidence of innocence, including Richard Glossip in Oklahoma, Marcellus Williams in Missouri, and Robert Roberson in Texas.

Three death row prisoners were exonerated in 2024. DPI’s ongoing research uncovered two additional exonerations from prior years, bringing the number of U.S. death row exonerations since 1972 to 200. In Texas, Melissa Lucio, who came within two days of execution in 2022, was declared “actually innocent” by a trial court in October.

The U.S. Supreme Court turned away almost all petitions (145 of 148, 98%) from death-sentenced prisoners in 2024, even those with strong evidence of innocence. This approach reflects the Court’s retreat from the critical role it has historically played in regulating and limiting use of the death penalty.  The Court’s December 6 certiorari grant in Rivers v. Lumpkin, a non-capital case, threatens to further restrict pathways to relief on appeal for death-sentenced prisoners.

The number of new death sentences (26) and executions (25) in 2024 represented an increase from 2023 when there were 21 new death sentences and 24 executions but represented a dramatic drop from twenty years ago when there were 130 new death sentences and 59 executions. This change can be attributed to an increase in non-unanimous death sentences in Florida, where the law was changed in April of 2023, and Alabama, the only two states that permit non-unanimous death sentencing.  In 2023, non-unanimous sentences accounted for three new death sentences (one in Florida, two in Alabama) but this year accounted for nine (six in Florida, three in Alabama).

Executions reflect the views of jurors at the time of sentencing—increasingly, views that are 20 or 30 years out of date. The majority of individuals executed in 2024 would likely not receive death sentences if their cases were tried today. Legislative and legal changes, increased scrutiny of prosecutorial practices, and shifts in societal attitudes over recent decades have significantly affected whether defendants receive death sentences.

Today’s jurors, with their better understanding of how severe mental illness, developmental disabilities, youth, and profound trauma affect behavior, are increasingly choosing life sentences over death sentences. All but one individual executed in 2024 had at least one of the above-listed vulnerabilities. Six of the 25 people executed were 21 or younger at the time of the crime for which they were executed.

As has been historically true, prisoners of color and prisoners convicted of killing white victims were overrepresented among those executed. Twelve of the 25 prisoners executed this year were people of color. The vast majority of defendants (80%) were executed for killing at least one white victim. Fourteen of the defendants sentenced to death this year (54%) were people of color. Death penalty-related legislation was enacted in at least six states (California, Delaware, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah) to limit use of the death penalty, alter execution methods or protocols, modify procedures, and increase secrecy. Death penalty abolition efforts continue in more than a dozen states, and efforts to reintroduce the death penalty in eight states failed. Only one effort to expand the death penalty to non-homicide crimes was successful, in Tennessee.

Read “The Death Penalty in 2024: Year End Report” here: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/research/analysis/reports/year-end-reports/the-death-penalty-in-2024

Mangino discusses extradition of Luigi Mangione on Law and Crime Network

Watch my interview with Sierra Gillespie on Law and Crime Network discussing the extradition of Liugi Mangione.

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Indiana carries out first execution in 15 years

The 24th Execution of 2024

An Indiana man, Joseph Corcoran, convicted in the 1997 killings of his brother and three other men received a lethal injection on December 18, 2024 in the state’s first execution in 15 years, without any independent witness present under the state’s laws shielding information about the death penalty.

Corcoran, 49, was pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m. CST at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, the Indiana Department of Correction said in a statement. Corcoran was scheduled to be executed with the powerful sedative pentobarbital, but the state agency’s statement did not mention that drug. Corcoran’s execution was the 24th in the U.S. this year.

Last summer the governor announced the resumption of state executions after a yearslong hiatus marked by a scarcity of lethal injection drugs nationwide.

Indiana and Wyoming are the only two states that do not allow members of the media to witness state executions, according to a recent report by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Indiana has provided few details about the process. Prison officials only provided photos of the execution chamber, which resembles a sparse operating room with a gurney, bright fluorescent lighting and an adjacent viewing room.

Corcoran’s attorneys have fought the death penalty sentence for years, arguing he is severely mentally ill, which affects his ability to understand and make decisions. Corcoran exhausted his federal appeals in 2016, and this month his attorneys asked the Indiana Supreme Court to stop his execution but the request was denied.

Corcoran’s attorneys asked the U.S. District Court of Northern Indiana last week to stop his execution and hold a hearing to decide if it would be unconstitutional because Corcoran has a serious mental illness. The court declined to intervene Friday, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit did the same Tuesday.

Corcoran’s attorneys then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case and issue an emergency order halting his execution, but the high court denied their request for a stay.

According to court records, before Corcoran shot the men in July 1997, he was stressed because his sister’s forthcoming marriage to Turner would necessitate moving out of the Fort Wayne home he shared with her and his brother.

Corcoran awoke to hear his brother and others downstairs talking about him, loaded his rifle and then shot all four, records show. While jailed, Corcoran reportedly bragged about fatally shooting his parents in 1992 in northern Indiana’s Steuben County. He was charged in their killings but acquitted.

Indiana’s last state execution was in 2009, when Matthew Wrinkles was put to death for killing his wife, her brother and sister-in-law in 1994.

Since that time 13 executions have been carried out in Indiana, but they were initiated and performed by federal officials in 2020 and 2021 at a federal prison in Terre Haute.

State officials have said they could not continue executions because a combination of drugs used in lethal injections had become unavailable.

For years there has been a shortage nationwide because pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell their products for that purpose. That has pushed states, including Indiana, to turn to compounding pharmacies, which manufacture drugs specifically for a client. Some use more accessible drugs such as the sedatives pentobarbital or midazolam — both of which, critics say, can cause intense pain.

Indiana planned to use pentobarbital to execute Corcoran and, like many states, is refusing to divulge the source of the drugs. When asked for details, the Indiana Department of Correction directed The Associated Press to a state law labeling the source of lethal injection drugs as confidential.

Religious groups, disability rights advocates and others have opposed his execution. About a dozen people, some holding candles, held a vigil late Tuesday to pray outside the prison, which is surrounded by barbed wire fences in a residential area about 60 miles (90 kilometers) east of Chicago.

“We can build a society without giving governmental authorities the right to execute their own citizens,” said Bishop Robert McClory of the Diocese of Gary, who led the prayers.

Other death penalty opponents also demonstrated outside the prison Tuesday night, some holding signs that read “Execution Is Not The Solution” and “Remember The Victims But Not With More Killing.”

“There is no need and no benefit from this execution. It’s all show,” said Abraham Borowitz, director of Death Penalty Action, his organization that protests every execution in the U.S.

Prison officials said in a brief statement Tuesday evening that Corcoran “requested Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for his last meal.”

Corcoran said farewell late Tuesday to relatives, including his wife, Tahina Corcoran, who told reporters outside the prison that they discussed their faith and their memories, including attending high school together. She reiterated her request for Indiana’s governor to commute her husband’s death sentence.

Tahina Corcoran said her husband is “very mentally ill” and she doesn’t think he fully grasps what is happening to him.

“He is in shock. He doesn’t understand,” she said.

One of Corcoran’s sisters, Kelly Ernst, who lost both a brother and her fiancé in the 1997 shootings, said she believes the death penalty should be abolished and executing her brother will not solve anything.

“I’m at a loss for words. I’m just really upset that they’re doing it close to Christmas,” she said. “My sister and I, our birthdays are in December. I mean, it just feels like it’s going to ruin Christmas for the rest of our lives.”

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Creators: Will Biden's Commutation Further Chill Clemency in Pennsylvania?

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
December 17, 2024

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro recently pointed out that "Governors and presidents have unique power to grant pardons and clemency and commute sentences. It is an absolute power, and it is a power that should be used incredibly carefully."

Recently, President Joe Biden granted clemency to nearly 1,500 Americans — the most ever in a single day, according to the White House. Biden was convinced these men and women had shown a successful record of rehabilitation and a strong commitment to making their communities safer.

The president commuted the sentences of individuals who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities. He also pardoned 39 individuals who were convicted of nonviolent crimes.

Biden's decision to commute the 17-year prison sentence of Michael Conahan has become a flash point in northeastern Pennsylvania. Biden has always talked with affection about his upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania. However, his decision to commute Conahan's sentence has ruffled feathers in his old hometown and beyond.

In what became known as the "kids-for-cash" scandal, Conahan and Judge Mark Ciavarella shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from a friend of Conahan's who built and co-owned two for-profit detention centers.

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of children would fill the beds of the private centers. The scandal prompted the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to throw out about 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 children.

The people of Pennsylvania have had a complicated and politically distorted view of clemency.

In Pennsylvania, the governor's clemency authority, derived by Article IV, Section 9 of the state constitution, is limited by the Board of Pardons. The board is comprised of the lieutenant governor, attorney general and three members appointed by the governor. Traditionally, if a majority of the board were to vote in favor of an application, the board recommends favorable action to the governor. If less than a majority of the board vote in favor, the result was a denial by the board and the application was not forwarded to the governor.

In the 1970s, mercy toward those serving life in prison flourished. Democratic Gov. Milton Shapp commuted 251 life sentences.

Today, clemency for a life or death sentence requires a unanimous vote of the board. The change came in 1996 with the election of Gov. Tom Ridge. During the campaign, Ridge attacked his opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Singel, for recommending, as a member of the Board of Pardons, a pardon for Reginald McFadden. Once released, McFadden committed another murder.

As a result of McFadden, pardons for serious crimes slowed to less than a trickle in Pennsylvania. Ridge, who won, in part, on the back of McFadden, never pardoned an inmate serving a life sentence. Ridge's Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker, who took over after Ridge became the first secretary of Homeland Security, pardoned one lifer. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, pardoned five lifers in eight years, and his successor GOP Tom Corbett commuted zero.

Shapiro, Pennsylvania's current governor, said Biden "got it absolutely wrong" when he commuted Conahan's sentence.

Shapiro said, "I study every single case that comes across my desk where there's a request for a pardon or clemency or a reduction of sentence, and I take it very seriously. I weigh the merits of the case. I weigh what occurred in the court proceedings. I think about public safety and victims and all of those issues factor into my decision."

Shapiro's predecessor, Democrat Tom Wolfe, pardon 53 lifers between 2015 and 2023 — a meager few when compared to Shapp in the 1970s, but a substantial improvement, nonetheless.

There are many men and women worthy of mercy. Will Biden's clemency for Conahan have a chilling effect on commutations in Pennsylvania the same way Reginald McFadden nearly extinguished clemency for inmates facing life in prison?

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on X @MatthewTMangino.

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Theory that gun restrictions must align with nation’s history and tradition generates pattern of partisan decisions

 In 2011, a federal appeals court voted 2-1 to uphold Washington, D.C.’s assault weapons ban. The lone dissent came from then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who argued that a gun restriction could only be constitutional if it fit with the nation’s history and tradition of gun regulation. Such a test, he wrote, would be “much less subjective,” preventing judges from injecting their personal ideologies. 

Eleven years later, in June 2022, Kavanaugh and his Republican-appointed allies on the Supreme Court incorporated that test into their decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, reshaping the right to bear arms and setting off a flurry of legal challenges to gun regulations.

But a new analysis by The Trace of more than 1,600 Second Amendment rulings filed in the wake of Bruen found that, instead of limiting judges’ discretion as Kavanaugh and the other conservative justices predicted, the decision has made federal courts even more of a political battleground, where gun laws rise and fall along partisan lines.

The Trace’s analysis identified 150 lawsuits seeking to overturn state assault weapons bans, age limits on buying firearms, licensing rules, and other gun restrictions. In these cases — many of which were brought by the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups — Republican-appointed judges sided with plaintiffs 48 percent of the time. 

That is four times the rate of Democratic appointees, who did so in 13 percent of the cases they heard.

The remaining 1,450 rulings reviewed by The Trace involved criminal defendants, many of whom were using Bruen in an attempt to have their charges or convictions thrown out. In these cases, some Democratic judges have been sympathetic to arguments that gun regulations not only have little historical support but also disproportionately affect marginalized groups.

Democratic appointees have sided with gun rights claims in 30 out of the 525 criminal cases they’ve heard, or 6 percent. Two judges — Robert Gettleman and Staci Yandle, both in Illinois — alone issued 17 of those 30 rulings. By comparison, Republican-appointed judges ruled in favor of defendants in 22 out of 748 criminal cases, or 3 percent. (The remaining criminal cases were heard by nonpartisan magistrate judges.)

“You’ve got the same Supreme Court decision, yet you’re getting this ideological difference in how the same rule is applied by all these different people,” said Jeremy Fogel, who served as a federal judge in California for 20 years before retiring in 2018. “It undermines trust when people think that judges are just deciding cases based on their policy preferences.”

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Mangino discusses Ohio Supreme Court decision overturning opioid verdict on WFMJ-TV21

Watch my interview with Sydney Canty on WFMJ-TV21 Weekend Today analyzing the Ohio Supreme Court overturning the massive opioid verdict against pharmacies in Trumbull and Lake Counties.

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ABC News capitulates to Donald Trump

ABC News is set to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Donald J. Trump, reported The New York Times.

The agreement was a significant concession by a major news organization and a rare victory for a media-bashing politician whose previous litigation efforts against news outlets have often ended in defeat.

Under the terms of a settlement revealed on Saturday, ABC News will donate the $15 million to Mr. Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum. The network and its star anchor, George Stephanopoulos, also published a statement saying they “regret” remarks made about Mr. Trump during a televised interview in March.

ABC News, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, will pay Mr. Trump an additional $1 million for his legal fees.

The outcome is an unusual win for Mr. Trump, who has frequently sued news organizations for defamation and frequently lost, including in litigation against CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Several experts in media law said they believed that ABC News could have continued to fight, given the high threshold required by the courts for a public figure like Mr. Trump to prove defamation. A plaintiff must not only show that a news outlet published false information, but that it did so knowing that the information was false or with substantial doubts about its accuracy.

“Major news organizations have often been very leery of settlements in defamation suits brought by public officials and public figures, both because they fear the dangerous pattern of doing so and because they have the full weight of the First Amendment on their side,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the University of Utah.

“What we might be seeing here is an attitudinal shift,” she added. “Compared to the mainstream American press of a decade ago, today’s press is far less financially robust, far more politically threatened, and exponentially less confident that a given jury will value press freedom, rather than embrace a vilification of it.”

ABC News did not elaborate on Saturday about its precise reasons for settling. “We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” a network spokeswoman said. A lawyer for Mr. Trump declined to comment on the agreement.

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