death penalty

(Runtime 00:48) New documents filed by the Latah County Prosecutor’s office say the circumstances of the murders meet multiple Idaho codes for pursuing…

The Supreme Court's three liberal justices strongly dissented Monday when the court's six-member conservative majority refused to hear an appeal brought by a brain-damaged death row inmate who wants to be executed by firing squad.

The Democratic proposal, shared first with NPR, comes as the party will have unified control of Congress after victories in two Georgia Senate races, a change in fortunes for Democratic legislative priorities. The legislation would end capital punishment at the federal level and require the resentencing of all federal inmates on death row.

Montgomery was originally scheduled to be executed last month, but that was postponed to January when her attorneys contracted the coronavirus after visiting her in prison and a federal judge granted them more time to file a petition for clemency.

This adaptation of attorney Bryan Stevenson's book about a wrongly condemned black man dramatizes that case while offering an unflinching look at the death penalty.

The Idaho Supreme Court is expected to decide next year whether prison officials must reveal the past source of their execution drugs. A University of Idaho professor's public records request is at the center of the case.

The first federal inmate scheduled to be executed under the newly re-opened policy is Danny Lewis Lee, a white supremacist from the Spokane, Wash., area convicted of three murders in Arkansas and bombing Spokane City Hall in 1996.

"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system," Attorney General William Barr said.

An Alabama man was denied the right to have his Muslim spiritual adviser in the death chamber. But a Texas prisoner's execution was delayed because he was denied his Buddhist minister.

Justices criticized a state appeals court for using outdated medical standards when it determined that a murderer wasn't intellectually disabled and could therefore be executed.