death penalty

An Alabama inmate convicted of killing his former girlfriend decades ago was executed Thursday night despite pleas from the victim’s family to spare his life. Joe Nathan James Jr. received a lethal injection at a south Alabama prison after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his request for a stay. James was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1994 shooting...

With Melissa Lucio’s execution put on indefinite hold by a Texas appeals court, her attorneys will now be focused on trying to convince a judge to recommend she get a new trial.

Melissa Lucio, a Texas mother of 14, has been on death row since 2008 after she was convicted of killing her 2-year-old daughter. Her execution was delayed just two days before she was scheduled to die to allow a lower court to review new evidence — including arguments that her confession was coerced. Molly Parmer, a criminal defense attorney who...

A group of bipartisan Texas lawmakers on Wednesday visited a death row inmate whose execution they are trying to stop amid doubts about whether she fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter.

More than four years after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the procedure to determine the gunman’s fate is has begun with jury selection.

During hours of relentless questioning, Melissa Lucio more than 100 times had denied fatally beating her 2-year-old daughter.

Texas prison officials said Tuesday they don’t plan to formally update their rules after last week’s Supreme Court ruling that indicated states must accommodate the requests of death row inmates who want to have their spiritual advisers pray aloud and touch them during their executions.

The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a Texas death row inmate seeking to have his pastor be allowed to pray out loud and touch him during his execution.

A bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers will hold a press conference on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. at the Texas Capitol to discuss their support of clemency or a reprieve for Melissa Lucio.

The Supreme Court ruled Friday to reimpose the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

A partner with a Texas law firm said Tuesday at least 20 attorneys are prepared to review the case of an Oklahoma death row inmate who has long maintained his innocence in the 1997 killing of a motel owner in Oklahoma City. Stan Perry, an attorney with Houston-based ReedSmith, said his firm already has begun reviewing the case of Richard…

California, which last carried out an execution in 2006, is one of 28 states that maintain death rows, along with the U.S. government

An attorney for two Oklahoma death row inmates facing executions in the coming months offered firing squad as a less problematic alternative to the state’s three-drug lethal injection.

The oldest Texas death row inmate is to be executed in April for killing a Houston police officer more than 30 years ago, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Medical experts say it’s unclear why an Oklahoma inmate began convulsing and vomiting after the first of three drugs used to execute him was administered

Willie B. Smith III, who avoided execution in February, has been put to death for the 1991 killing of a woman abducted during a robbery and then shot in a cemetery.

A man accused of fatally shooting his estranged ex-girlfriend, her husband and six children, including his own son, at a Houston home will not face the death penalty, authorities said.

Alabama said it will allow a death row inmate’s pastor to hold his hand during a lethal injection next month, a decision that was made to end litigation over the issue.

Daybell was also charged in his previous wife’s death. Court documents filed Thursday revealed that the Fremont County Prosecutor’s Office will seek the death penalty in that case as well.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments this fall over whether Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev can be put to death.