The Latest Breaking News from Death Penalty

Japan is one of the few economically developed countries to still have the death penalty, and hanging has been its sole execution method for around a century and a half

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has announced a pause in her state’s use of capital punishment. It follows a run of botched lethal injection executions in the state, including two where the procedure had to be abandoned before the inmates succumbed to the cocktail of death drugs.

A federal judge will decide whether to block Mississippi from using three drugs when it puts inmates to death

Paris (AFP) - On a biting cold morning on November 28, 1972, a Frenchman was guillotined for a murder he did not commit, in a case that so traumatised his lawyer he would spend the rest of his life campaigning to end the death penalty.

Qatari authorities are ignoring international law by failing to inform embassies when their citizens are arrested, detained or are pending trial for a death sentence.

She believed in the death penalty and said that in countries where they have it, “I feel safer walking down the street.” Yet in 1978, Ruth Bell Graham befriended North Carolina’s death row inmate Velma Barfield, convicted of murdering seven people, including her own mother. And while there was no…

After a gruesome series of executions gone wrong, Gov. Kay Ivey hits pause. But there's no fixing the death penalty

Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist Israeli lawmaker and who is set to become the minister in charge of police under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called for the resumption of “targeted assassinations” against Palestinian factions. “We must exact a price from terror,” he said at the scene of one of two explosions…

While the pause comes as a relief to those opposed to the death penalty, Ivey's full-throated defense of the practice makes it clear that she seeks only a temporary pause in executions, not an end to the policy.

Paris (AFP) - Iran, already one of the world's most prolific users of the death penalty, is planning to use capital punishment as a means to quell the protest movement by spreading a climate of fear in the population, activists warn.

William J. Kunkle Jr. secured the death penalty for serial killer John Wayne Gacy and later taught about the infamous trial and some of its legal peculiarities.