Florida has executed more people in 2025 than in any single year since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The state carried out its 17th execution Nov. 20, with two more scheduled by the end of the year.
When asked about the increase, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said COVID-19 and other factors slowed executions in some years. He said he believes the system for executions should move more quickly. DeSantis has authorized 28 executions since he assumed office in 2019, with zero executions in 2020, 2021 and 2022. His predecessor, Republican Sen. Rick Scott, oversaw 28 executions over eight years.
“It’s an appropriate punishment for the worst offenders. We have lengthy reviews and appeals that I think should be shorter,” DeSantis said in a Nov. 3 news conference.
Referring to inmates on death row for crimes committed decades ago, DeSantis said victims’ families are owed quicker executions and that a more streamlined process could deter crime.
Death penalty supporters and opponents have long offered competing studies on whether capital punishment deters crime. Some point to comparable violent crimes in states with and without the death penalty. Others argue there are statistical correlations between the death penalty and certain crime reductions.
Experts said it isn’t well understood whether the promise of swift executions would be more of a deterrent; they said it’s inconclusive whether such a change would have a meaningful effect.
Mark Schlackman, senior director for Florida State University’s Center for the Advancement of Human Rights and a Florida death penalty expert, said research generally shows that swift and severe punishment may be a deterrent, but it isn’t clear whether that extends to the death penalty and how quickly it’s carried out.
Here is what we know about capital punishment in Florida.
How long do Florida inmates spend on death row? How does that compare with the rest of the country?
Death row timelines vary by jurisdiction, but the average time for Florida inmates is around 22.6 years, according to 2023 Bureau of Justice Statistics data.
Florida’s average is in line with other states with the death penalty and the federal system.
Lengthy stretches between sentencing and execution are common.
“Death sentences are the most serious sanctions that governments can inflict on human beings, so all must be carefully reviewed for accuracy and fairness before an execution is scheduled,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that provides capital punishment data. “A thoughtful and careful review of the claims in a case often takes time.”
Many cases get sent back to lower courts when constitutional errors are identified. Appeals can take years if the government is slow to respond or rule on a petition, Maher said.
Maher’s group found that since 1973, about 200 people on death row have been exonerated in the U.S. — with some spending more than 40 years to prove their innocence.
Currently, 27 states, the federal government and the U.S. military authorize capital punishment. The first Trump administration resumed federal executions in 2020 after a 17-year hiatus.
How many people have been exonerated in Florida?
Thirty people have been exonerated in Florida, more than any other state. Illinois is second with 23, followed by Texas with 18.
Some experts point to Florida’s broad death penalty criteria and overburdened public defender system as reasons for the high number, and said the state has a shortage of experienced defense attorneys.
Stephen Harper, a Florida International University professor who runs a legal clinic for death penalty cases, told the Florida Phoenix that Florida prosecutors also have wide discretion on when they can seek the death penalty.
Mishandled evidence and unreliable forensic procedures have also played a role in the state’s wrongful convictions, experts said. DNA evidence has been a contributing factor in several of Florida’s exonerations.
“There have been cases advanced by ‘junk science’ that were ultimately discredited and also instances of prosecutorial overreach, which isn’t necessarily unique to Florida,” Schlackman said.
How has death penalty sentencing evolved in Florida?
Florida’s lawmakers have altered capital punishment sentencing multiple times over the past decade, with the latest changes making it easier for prosecutors to get death sentences and have them upheld.
In 2020, the state’s Supreme Court ended the practice of having courts review capital sentences. These reviews required an appeals court to compare a death penalty sentence with similar cases to ensure constitutional standards were met and the sentence was warranted.
In 2023, Florida enacted two laws that broadened capital punishment sentencing. One lowered the threshold from requiring a unanimous jury vote of 12 to 0 to a vote of 8 to 4 — the lowest in the country. The state also expanded the death penalty to apply to some non-homicide crimes, such as certain sexual offenses against children.
Florida is “one of just two states to allow non-unanimous death sentencing, making it a clear outlier even among active death penalty states,” Maher said. The other state, Alabama, requires 10 votes in favor of a death sentence.
Does quick death penalty sentencing serve as a crime deterrent, as DeSantis said?
Criminal justice and capital punishment experts said data neither supports nor negates the idea that the death penalty or swifter executions deter crime.
Daniel Nagin, who chaired the National Research Council’s Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty, previously said the “certainty of apprehension” has been shown to be a more effective crime deterrent, versus the severity of consequences.
Studying deterrence related to the death penalty is challenging, experts said. Capital punishment is applied rarely, making it difficult to disentangle the number of homicides the sentence could have deterred from changes in homicide rates caused by other factors.
In 2012, the National Research Council released Deterrence and the Death Penalty, a review of more than three decades of studies on capital punishment’s effect on homicide rates. The group concluded the research wasn’t conclusive and recommended against using the studies to inform policy decisions.
An Oklahoma death row inmate was hospitalized Thursday after being found unresponsive in his cell, officials said, just hours after being granted clemency on the same day he was scheduled to be executed.
Forty-six-year-old Tremane Wood was granted clemency Thursday morning by Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt. After that decision came down, Wood met with his attorneys for “several hours,” according to a statement from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. The agency said it then moved him off death row and into a new cell.
At some point, a correctional officer found Wood “unresponsive” in his new cell, the department said, and prison staff determined that he had “experienced a medical event that resulted in injuries.”
This Feb. 9, 2023, photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections shows Tremane Wood.
Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP
Wood was taken to a nearby hospital “out of extreme caution,” where doctors found that his “medical event” was due to “dehydration and stress,” the department said.
Following the incident, Wood also took part in a phone call with ODOC spokesperson Kay Thompson, the department said, in which he told her that he couldn’t “really explain what happened.”
He allegedly told Thompson that he had laid down to sleep and “must have rolled off his bunk,” disclosing that the next thing he remembered was waking “up in the infirmary” with “[his] head busted and [his] lip busted,” according to the department.
“He also confirmed that no one else was in his cell at the time of the medical event and that he did not do anything intentionally to cause it,” the department said in its news release.
In the phone call, Wood allegedly indicated to Thompson that he had not eaten or drank anything since Wednesday evening, the department added.
He was discharged from the hospital and returned to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, where he spoke with his family and a spiritual adviser, the department said.
When reached by CBS News early Friday morning, Amanda Bass Castro Alves, an attorney for Wood, was unable to comment on his medical condition.
“I’m extremely proud of my team today,” ODOC Executive Director Justin Farris said in a statement. “It is our statutory duty to carry out court-ordered sentences, and our staff always perform their duties with extreme professionalism and with the utmost respect and compassion. Today’s events highlight the tremendous job they do day in and day out, especially during high-profile events.”
Wood had been sentenced to death after being convicted, along with his brother Zjaiton Wood, in the 2001 murder of Ronnie Wipf, a migrant farmworker from Montana, during a botched robbery at an Oklahoma City hotel.
Zjaiton Wood was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He died in 2019.
Tremane Wood and his attorneys, however, had always maintained that while he was involved in the robbery, he did not carry out the slaying, arguing that the murder was committed by Zjaiton Wood alone.
Last week, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended clemency for Tremane Wood.
“After a thorough review of the facts and prayerful consideration, I have chosen to accept the Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation to commute Tremane Wood’s sentence to life without parole,” Stitt said in a statement Thursday morning. “This action reflects the same punishment his brother received for their murder of an innocent young man and ensures a severe punishment that keeps a violent offender off the streets forever.”
This marked Stitt’s second clemency since taking office. Tremane Wood is also the sixth condemned person to receive clemency in the state in the modern history of capital punishment.
For Charles Victor Thompson, the one constant in his life has been the almost three decades he’s spent as Inmate No. 00999306 in a small, isolated prison cell. Now it seems the one and final thing that will change that is his scheduled execution on January 28.
In 1999, he was convicted of killing his off-and-on girlfriend Dennise Hayslip and her new lover. Darren Cain. Thompson doesn’t disagree that he fired the shots, but claims that the hospital is responsible for Hayslip’s death. He’s hoping for a stay of execution, but concedes that could be challenging. Clemency is even less possible, he says.
His other claim to notoriety is that in 2005, he engineered an escape from the Harris County Jail while being sentenced to death for a second time. He wasn’t picked up until four days later in Louisiana, but he surmises that local authorities were so embarrassed by this that he got on their priority list.
If so, they took a while to get to him. He’s been incarcerated at taxpayer expense for 27 years now and his one question, and one the Houston Press asked the DA’s Office: Why now?
Thompson, 55, known to his supporters and comrades on Texas Death Row as “Chuck,” spoke to the Press last week from the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston and acknowledged that getting a stay, a temporary reprieve based on new evidence, is a long shot.
“Once you’re denied by the Supreme Court in your final appeal, you can’t bring up anything that was ever filed before,” he said. “You can only bring new evidence pertaining to those issues. We have a little bit. We have a private investigator, one of the best. I don’t want to tip their hand.”
The execution date, the first of Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare’s tenure, surprised Thompson and piqued the interest of other death row inmates who fear they could be next.
“Why am I being thrown under the bus? The escape, [pressure from] the victim’s family, I guess,” Thompson said.
Andrew Smith, division chief for post-conviction writs at the Harris County DA’s Office, said the office requested a judge sign the execution order because Thompson has exhausted all his appeals and is therefore “date-eligible.”
“It’s been since 2021 since he exhausted all his appeals, and there’s zero question as to his culpability in this case,” Smith said.
January 28 was chosen by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice based on calendar availability and to bypass the winter holidays, so an inquiry about how the date was set nets several different responses. It was, however, set into motion by the Harris County DA’s Office.
During an hour-long interview behind plexiglass on October 22, Thompson laughed occasionally, joked with female guards and tried his best to remind himself and those in the visitation room that he’s not a bad guy.
“Ol’ Chuck, he’s a hoot,” one officer said.
Friendly, affable and easy to talk with, Chuck Thompson is by all accounts, a con artist. He’s the kind of guy who can don a pair of sunglasses, wrinkle-free khaki Dockers and a cobalt blue button-down and walk out of the Harris County Jail, posing as an investigator with the Texas Attorney General’s Office. Not just anyone can do that. Thompson doesn’t have any visible tattoos and, back in ’05, he may have looked more like a cop than an inmate.
He wasn’t always so cool and collected.
The inmate says he was drunk and strung out on cocaine when he went to Hayslip’s apartment on Wunderlich Drive in north Houston and confronted his ex’s new love interest. Thompson has said that Cain charged at him and he grabbed a gun in the house to defend himself. Hayslip intervened in the altercation between the two men and was shot in the cheek.
Trial testimony tells a different story: that Thompson showed up at the apartment with a gun and shot Cain four times and Hayslip once. Thompson did not testify at trial.
Originally charged with manslaughter after Cain died at the crime scene, charges were upgraded when Hayslip died a week later at Memorial Hermann Hospital. Thompson was eligible for a death sentence because the crime was a double homicide, which is covered under the capital murder statute.
Thompson says that Hayslip, who was 39 at the time of her death, was walking and talking in the moments before she was transported by Life Flight helicopter to the hospital. Trial testimony revealed that Hayslip’s dentures were blown out and her tongue was severed.
“There were no winners in this situation,” Thompson said. “It’s tragic what happened. I regret it. I have remorse. I want people to be able to heal and move past it. I pray for them and I’ve asked them to forgive me.”
A bullet penetrated Hayslip’s airway, and medical records showed that her breathing tube was dislodged from her windpipe, causing her to go without oxygen for five to 10 minutes. Medical expert Dr. Paul Radelat testified in a civil case that hospital staff made mistakes but they weren’t malicious.
“The shooter, I think we can safely say, intended evil,” Radelat says in an episode of the 2018 Netflix documentary series I Am A Killer, which featured the Charles Thompson case.
In a 2019 appeal, Thompson argued that “the death of Ms. Hayslip was the sole result of her loss of oxygen to the brain, which in turn caused her family to terminate her life one week after she was shot.” If Hayslip had survived, Thompson’s maximum sentence would have been life in prison.
Hayslip’s family sued the hospital for medical malpractice, but a judge found that hospital staff was not at fault. Hayslip’s son Wade pointed out in the Netflix documentary, “She’s not in the hospital if you don’t shoot her.”
Chuck Thompson was the subject of an episode in a 2018 Netflix documentary series titled I Am a Killer. Credit: Screenshot
Thompson says he was disappointed and surprised to find out he was on Teare’s radar. The new DA took office in January 2025 and has secured two death penalty convictions but no execution dates had been set until Thompson’s came up last month. Nine people were executed during the two-term tenure of Teare’s predecessor, Kim Ogg.
“Kim Ogg made me nervous,” Thompson says. “She killed three of my friends during her last year in office.”
Thompson says he’d just filed a motion to appoint new counsel the week before his execution date was set.
“I’ve been trying to push things forward,” he said. “I haven’t just been sitting here playing chess and dominoes, waiting to die like a lot of people do. I never wanted to be that guy with 11th-hour appeals sitting behind the execution chamber waiting for a phone call.”
Harris County juries hand down death sentences in comparatively high numbers — of the 167 men and women on Texas Death Row, 63 were tried in Houston — but the Bayou City is not known for setting dates.
District Judge Lori Chambers Gray signed the execution order on September 11 during a hearing at which Thompson and his pro bono attorney Eric Allen of Ohio appeared via videoconference. A spokesperson for Gray said the judge is prohibited from commenting on matters pending in her courtroom. Allen and another Thompson attorney, Greg Gardner of Colorado, could not be reached for comment.
So why did Thompson, all of a sudden, get an execution date?
The prisoner said there were 18 people at the hearing when his death date was set. Most were members of Cain’s family; some were friends of Hayslip’s from Bimbo’s bar, a dive joint frequented by Thompson and his victims. No one was there to support Thompson.
“Eighteen people took off work on a Thursday morning and they were there at 8:15 when the camera came on,” Thompson said. “Court didn’t even start until 9, so I think they pushed for it, the Cain family and all the bartenders and friends. They’ve been avidly against me and my supporters for 28 years.”
The DA’s office confirmed that families in four different death penalty cases have contacted the office since the new administration took over in January. When asked if pressure was applied to the DA’s office from the Cain and Hayslip families, Smith reiterated that Thompson has exhausted his appeals.
“He murdered two people,” Smith said. “He’s a dangerous individual and the jury’s verdict needs to be respected.”
Thompson says he’s asked for forgiveness twice and believes members of the Hayslip family may have mixed feelings, with some who would be OK with him serving life without the possibility of parole. Hayslip’s son Wade said in a television interview that he wants another apology from Thompson when the condemned man is on the gurney on execution day.
“I understand that,” Thompson says. “I still love [Dennise Hayslip]. I’ve never spoke bad about her. I refuse to do that. I was raised better. We were both living a poor lifestyle. We were both alcoholics. It was just a bunch of bad things that came together all at once.”
When Thompson turned himself in after the shooting — he says he “made himself available for questioning” by going to the police station with his father — officers never tested his blood alcohol content, which he says would have shown he was heavily intoxicated.
The night before the shooting, he went home with Hayslip after shutting down Bimbo’s at 2 a.m. Cain showed up. “One thing led to another, and me and him fought,” Thompson said.
Houston police were called and separated the two men. “If they’d done their job, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” Thompson said. “It was obvious that I was three sheets to the wind. They let me walk off, I was staggering, and [they let me] get in my car and drive away. I should have gone to jail for public intoxication.”
Thompson returned to the house hours later, and Cain was still there. That’s when the shooting happened.
Chuck Thompson was 27 years old when he was arrested for the murders of Dennise Hayslip and Darren Cain in 1998. Credit: Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Thompson’s digital prison file shows that he dropped out of school in 10th grade and worked as a laborer, heating and air conditioning installer and exterminator. He had no prior prison record when the crime occurred on April 30, 1998, but he says he got into trouble as a juvenile. Thompson was 27 years old when the crime occurred.
“Thompson got into an argument with a white male and white female in her apartment,” according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice summary. “The night before, officers had been called to the same address and had escorted Thompson away from the residence. Thompson returned early the next morning and kicked the door in. Thompson shot the male, causing his death, and injuring the female severely enough to require life flight to the hospital. She died one week later, as a result of the shooting.”
Escape from Harris County
Thompson was sentenced to death twice. He escaped while in Harris County custody after his second sentencing hearing in 2005 and went on the run for four days, eventually being apprehended in Shreveport, Louisiana. Although Thompson didn’t escape from the prison where death row is housed, he is one of just three inmates in Texas history to escape while sentenced to death.
Raymond Hamilton, a member of the Bonnie and Clyde gang, escaped in 1934 and was later apprehended and executed. Martin Gurule escaped in 1998. The inmate was shot in the back by guards while scaling a fence and his body was later recovered in the Trinity River. Following Gurule’s escape, death row was moved from the O.B. Ellis Unit in Huntsville to Polunsky in Livingston. Executions occur in Huntsville but the prisoners set to die aren’t moved until their death date.
Thompson had street clothes hidden in his cell that he wore to the resentencing hearing. He posed as an investigator with the attorney general’s office, flashing a doctored ID badge and walking out of the Harris County Jail. He said he called upon his years of playing Dungeons & Dragons to coach himself to “stay in character.”
“I told myself to walk, not run,” he said.
Once he was safely out of sight of the jail, he stripped down to a tank top and shorts to pose as a jogger, then he hopped on a boxcar train.He was arrested while using a payphone outside of a Shreveport liquor store. He’d called his parents and a female friend who he’d hoped would help him flee to Canada. She turned him in for a $10,000 reward.
While on the run, Thompson says he posed as a Hurricane Katrina evacuee and was given money by “good Samaritans.” Thompson’s escape is outlined in detail in the book The Grass Beneath His Feet by Roger Rodriguez, published in 2009. Thompson told the Press he ghostwrote the book, which is riddled with typographical errors and bounces around from flashbacks to his childhood to the crime scene to the escape.
The inmate told the Press he escaped “out of sheer frustration.” The state had already decided twice that he deserved to die, so when he saw a chance at freedom, he took it. After Thompson’s escape, a rumor swirled that Jorge Rivas, a member of the Texas Seven who escaped the maximum security John B. Connally Unit in 2000, planted the idea in Thompson’s head, saying, “I couldn’t do it but you can.”
When asked about the rumor, Thompson said, “I remember Jorge. He was a friend of mine.” Rivas was executed in 2012.
Thompson says no one helped him with the escape and that there are some details — like how he got a handcuff key — that he’ll take to his grave. “I work alone,” he said, flashing a grin.”It was a different time, when there weren’t smartphones and cameras everywhere.” He says he wouldn’t be able to pull it off today, “even if I had a head start.”
“I just wanted to live,” he said. “I was angry with Harris County because of what was done to me. I was out there for four days and I kinda debunked their whole ‘future threat to society’ thing.”
Thompson says he considered robbing a bank so he could buy a car but authorities got to him before he could get into more trouble. His four days on the lam probably destroyed his chance at clemency, he says.
“Clemency is not really an option for me because of my escape,” Thompson said. “I was told in no uncertain terms when I came back from the escape that if I didn’t cooperate and let them put me on a lie detector test and answer all their questions, that I could forget about clemency. That’s unofficial. I’m sure they won’t acknowledge it now because the law says I get a chance at it. We’ll file something. I’m not against it but I don’t expect it.”
Thompson claims that he found out that the Harris County DA’s office was planning to move forward with an execution date when they sent investigators to shake down his cell in August. Such an “inventory” is standard procedure to determine what motions an inmate may be planning to file, Smith said. Prison employees put the inmate’s belongings in a cart and wheel it to a conference room for the DA’s office to review, and they are trained to exclude privileged legal documents.
Thompson says he was told by his attorney that the DA’s office was looking for evidence that the inmate might be planning an “Atkins claim” of mental incompetence, but Thompson says authorities already knew from his court appearances and an IQ test that he did not have intellectual disabilities.
“I feel like I’m not afforded the same courtesy that most prisoners get when they get to this stage,” he says. “[Prosecutors] usually contact counsel and ask if they’re working on anything and say they’re looking at seeking a date. It was wrong what they did. No prosecutor is allowed to read your attorney-client communications. They had all my stuff for four hours.”
The inmate says he inquired about filing a grievance against the DA’s office and his attorney told him, “At this point, we’ve got to focus on the task at hand, trying to get a stay.”
Smith said death row inmates frequently file motions for a stay once an execution date is set, and the state then files a response. It’s not unheard of for a stay to be granted.
Life on Death Row
Thompson was moved on September 11 to “Death Watch,” an isolated cell at the Polunsky Unit with a toilet and sink, a metal bed and a camera that monitors him 24 hours a day.
A Texas prison cell is about 60 square feet. Credit: Texas Department of Criminal Justice
Prior to the move, he was in a one-man cell in the segregated 12 Building, where death row inmates can communicate with each other via a makeshift “intercom” and pass items from cell to cell on a clothesline. Communicating with other inmates has been difficult for Thompson because he has tinnitus and partial hearing loss in one ear.
“When someone tells me to send the line, I’m like, ‘What’s the time?’ When they say, ‘What’s the time?’ I’m sending my fishing line,” he says. He also recently broke his glasses and says that with about 100 days to live, no one is moving swiftly to get him to the optometrist.
There are just three men on Death Watch: Thompson; Cedric Ricks of Tarrant County, who has an execution date set for March; and Billy Tracy, who lives full-time in the super-segregated and monitored area for security reasons. Tracy has a history of assaulting law enforcement officers and got his death sentence for killing a guard at the Barry B. Telford Unit in 2015.
On Death Watch, Thompson gets about two hours of recreation time, five days a week. The inmate was part of a faith-based program on death row prior to getting his execution date. He says he was a “cradle Catholic,” raised going to church, but he began using drugs and drinking when he was 12 years old, which set into motion a lifestyle of troublemaking. He returned to his faith recently, although he doesn’t make a big deal about it.
Chuck Thompson has 10 people on his visitation list who he can speak to on a phone behind plexiglass. His aging parents no longer make the trip to Livingston for visits. Credit: April Towery
He spends his time reading, writing penpals and fundraising through a network of supporters, most of them women, about 300 of whom are in a Facebook group called Friends of Charles Victor Thompson, operated by a woman in Wales. Although he says he hasn’t always been portrayed favorably in the media, he does interviews when asked because it helps him build a network of supporters who help pay for attorneys and private investigators.
The inmate has lived about half his life in the free world and the other half in prison and says solitary confinement “ain’t no way to live.” He added that he’s deeply remorseful for the crime he committed. He also isn’t sure why he’s been singled out by Harris County to die when others are having their cases reviewed by Teare’s new Conviction Integrity Unit.
“I feel like they threw me under the bus,” Thompson says. “People think it’s probably because of the escape. It’s a black eye for law enforcement in Houston, I guess.”
The Conviction Integrity Unit, led by prosecutor Scott Pope, generally reviews cases when there is a claim of innocence, which has not been made in Thompson’s case.
Thompson also claims that former Assistant DA Kelly Siegler, who prosecuted him in the late 1990s while Chuck Rosenthal was district attorney, made deals with a jailhouse snitch to provide false information against him. The informant’s testimony resulted in Thompson’s death sentence being overturned after prosecutors played an audio tape of a jail call at trial without notifying Thompson or his attorneys. The outcome of the second sentencing hearing was the same as the first: death.
Siegler worked as a prosecutor from 1987 to 2008, during which time she sent 19 people to death row. The DA’s office didn’t respond to Thompson’s claims about the former ADA.
As Thompson enters what could be the last three months of his life, he says he will be diligently working toward getting a stay of execution and mending relationships with his loved ones.
Thompson’s parents are still married and live in Houston. His mother, in her late 70s, is heartbroken, Thompson says. The prisoner’s older brother has been in constant trouble with the law and “is about to go back to prison for the seventh time.” His younger brother, who is 48 years old, lives at home with his parents and was awaiting a possible cancer diagnosis last week.
Thompson talks to his parents often but they haven’t visited in person in years.
“She’s a blessing,” he said of his mother. “I’m surprised she hasn’t snapped and wound up in the loony bin. They’re aging and it’s hard for them to get up here. They want to stay out of the public eye.”
Thompson has a daughter, 34, and a son, 31, and maintains a good relationship with his daughter.
“My son grew up without me because of my meth addiction,” he said. “In 1995, I split up with his mother, so he grew up without a dad. It crushed my heart last year, writing letters to our kids, all the guys in the faith-based program, I’d say 75 percent, talked about being in a broken home and growing up without a dad. I never had to experience that myself but I did it to my kid. I felt so low. Now I understand what he went through.”
Thompson says he hasn’t been a model prisoner and had a period of rebellion after his escape.
“I had a little pirate-raise-the-flag stage,” he said with a laugh. “Every man reaches a stage in his life where it’s time to throw caution to the wind. I came back [after the escape] and I had a few problems. I ended up getting carried out of a captain’s office. Nothing major. I don’t have any assaults or any violence. I’ve never let them spray me with the gas. Why torture myself?”
He said last week that, despite a sometimes rocky 27 years behind bars, he believes he’ll get a stay of execution.
“It’s in God’s hands,” he says. “I’ve been told by the guys to not be arrogant, don’t expect it, just humble yourself before God. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”
“I’m not afraid of death, as it’s a journey we all make,” the inmate wrote in a letter to the Press. “If ya right with the Lord and know where you’re going, what’s to fear? I’m just not in any hurry to check out. Got lots of living to do still.”
A man who stabbed his girlfriend and her 8-year-old son to death with kitchen knives in a Bedford apartment in 2013 is to be executed by the state on March 11, a state district judge in Tarrant County ordered on Monday.
A jury found Cedric Ricks guilty of capital murder and in May 2014 returned a death punishment verdict.
Ricks repeatedly stabbed Roxann Sanchez, with whom he was arguing, and Anthony Figueroa.
Ricks has exhausted his available legal remedies in state and federal courts, and there are no stays in effect in the case. The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office sought an order setting the execution date and a death warrant from Judge Ryan Hill, who currently presides in the 371st District Court.
The state will use an injection of pentobarbital to execute Ricks in the death chamber at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit. He is 51.
Two other children were in the apartment when the killings occurred on May 1, 2013. An 8-month-old boy, Isaiah, was not injured. He is Ricks and Sanchez’s son.
Also there was the 30-year-old woman’s eldest son, 12-year-old Marcus Figueroa. The boy was himself stabbed and watched his mother and brother die.
From left, Marcus Figueroa, Anthony Figueroa and Roxann Sanchez were stabbed by Sanchez’s boyfriend Cedric Ricks on May 1, 2013. Family
“He held my head down with one hand and stabbed me with the other hand,” Marcus Figueroa testified at Ricks’ trial. “He stabbed me a bunch of times. He didn’t say anything. After he stabbed me, he pushed me to the ground.”
Marcus Figueroa made a gurgling noise, a sound that had come from Anthony, to try to suggest to Ricks that he was dead and stop the stabbing. Marcus mimicked the last breaths of his younger brother.
Ricks testified in the trial’s punishment phase. He told the jury that he wanted to die.
Ricks avoided the specifics of the homicides.
“It’s irrelevant what happened that night,” Ricks testified. “The jury made a decision to convict me on the facts that were presented. Maybe if I had testified [in the guilt-innocence phase] it would have been different.”
The last defendant in a capital murder case in Tarrant County who the Texas Department of Criminal Justice executed was Steven Nelson, who was put to death in February. Nelson beat Arlington pastor Clinton Dobson and suffocated him with a plastic bag.
Defense attorneys Bill Ray and Steve Gordon were appointed to represent Nelson and Ricks. Bob Gill represented the state in the prosecution of both defendants. Robert Huseman joined Gill in the Ricks case.
Ricks has a brain that predisposes him to violent behavior, according to a neuroscience researcher called by the defense as a witness.
Jeffrey Lewine concluded from reviewing images of Ricks’ brain that one area, the putamen, is larger than that area in the brains of control subjects. Larger putamens are associated with increased aggression, Lewine testified.
The defendant’s mother recounted in testimony her son’s misbehavior in early life.
“We tried everything we could to help him,” Helen Ricks testified. “We tried whipping him, we went to counselors, we did what we could. We never thought we would be in a position like this, where he would be tried for [capital] murder.”
Emerson Clarridge covers crime and other breaking news for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He works days and reports on law enforcement affairs in Tarrant County. He previously was a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, New York.
Robert Roberson, theTexas death row inmate believed by many to be innocent, did not die as scheduled Thursday night. Despite a handful of challenges from a state that seemed intent on killing him, the Texas Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay of execution for the East Texas man who has spent more than two decades awaiting lethal injection…
In a damning display of justice gone wrong, Marcellus Williams, a Missouri death row inmate, was executed, despite overwhelming evidence suggesting his innocence. His death by lethal injection has sparked outrage, with the blame falling squarely on the shoulders of former President Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Missouri Governor Mike Parson, and the conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who refused to halt the execution.
Williams, 55, was convicted in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle in her St. Louis apartment. However, no DNA evidence ever tied him to the crime. The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which urged a stay of execution, had supported his legal team in its tenacious fight for clemency. The victim’s own family had requested Williams’ sentence be commuted to life without parole, writing, “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”
Yet, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court—Chief Justice John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—voted to deny Williams a stay. Their decision condemned an innocent man to death, and it is a stark reminder of how deeply broken the justice system has become under their influence. Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, recognizing the glaring miscarriage of justice.
This execution didn’t happen in a vacuum. It is a direct result of the political power play that Trump and McConnell orchestrated. Trump’s appointment of three ultra-conservative justices—Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett—solidified a Supreme Court more interested in ideology than fairness. McConnell’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s 2016 nominee, Merrick Garland, to replace Justice Antonin Scalia was a pivotal move in ensuring this conservative stronghold. He later rushed through Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation weeks before Trump’s election loss, fully aware of the long-term consequences.
Gov. Mike Parson, a staunch MAGA Republican, ignored every plea for mercy, including those from the prosecutor’s office and over a million citizens and faith leaders who called for clemency. Despite abundant evidence of Williams’ innocence, Parson’s decision to carry out the execution was viewed by many as cruel and motivated by bloodlust.
“This was a lynching. Make no mistake, this was state-sanctioned murder of an innocent Black man,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson declared. “Governor Parson had the responsibility to save a life, and he didn’t. When DNA evidence exonerates a man, capital punishment is not justice—it is murder. Trump, McConnell, and the conservative Supreme Court justices now have blood on their hands.”
Johnson added that Williams’ final moments were a tragic reminder of the human cost of this injustice. Reportedly, Williams lay conversing with a spiritual advisor as the lethal injection took effect. His chest heaved a few times before he went still, as his son and two attorneys watched helplessly from another room. No one from Gayle’s family was present to witness the execution—likely because they had asked for his life to be spared.
Cori Bush, Missouri’s Democratic Representative and staunch opponent of the death penalty, minced no words in condemning Parson’s role. “Governor Parson didn’t just end Marcellus Williams’ life—he demonstrated how the death penalty is wielded without any regard for innocence, compassion, equity, or humanity,” Bush stated. “He ignored the facts, the evidence, and the pleas from all sides. The so-called ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard was tossed out, because Marcellus was a Black man in a system rigged against him.”
Many also said the hypocrisy of the so-called “pro-life” conservatives was laid bare. A U.S. Army veteran and activist, Charlotte Clymer blasted the justices responsible, saying, “These people don’t care about life. They only care about control.”
Williams’ case, much like so many others involving Black men and the death penalty, exposed the deep racial bias embedded in America’s legal system. His attorneys had raised significant concerns about racial discrimination during jury selection, and the lack of credible evidence—especially DNA that didn’t match Williams—only underscored the injustice of his conviction. Yet, the political machinery of Trump, McConnell, Parson, and the Supreme Court moved forward without pause, ensuring his death.
As Bush and others stated, Williams’s death wasn’t just an issue of a broken justice system—this was a political execution. Like Parson, the U.S. Supreme Court chose to ignore the evidence, the pleas, and the humanity of Williams. A litany of social media users posted comments demanding that Williams’ blood is on the hands of Republicans, and the country must reckon with the brutal truth that our highest court, and the leaders who enable it, can no longer be trusted to protect the innocent.
Williams’ execution, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence, is a searing indictment of a broken system where political power and racial bias outweigh truth and justice, Bush noted. ‘This was not just an execution,” she railed. “This was a state-sponsored lynching, and every person responsible for it must be held accountable.’”
Related
[ad_2]
Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid to stop the execution of Missouri death row inmate Marcellus Williams, who was convicted in the 1998 stabbing death of Felicia Gayle in a St. Louis suburb.
Williams, who has maintained his innocence, is set to be put to death by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CT.
Earlier efforts to halt the execution were denied Monday by the Missouri Supreme Court and Republican Gov. Mike Parson. His execution is the third in Missouri this year, and among five taking place nationwide across a seven-day span if the remaining three are carried out on schedule, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they would have granted the request to halt the execution.
“Tonight, Missouri will execute an innocent man … The victim’s family opposes his execution. Jurors, who originally sentenced him to death, now oppose his execution. The prosecutor’s office that convicted and sentenced him to death has now admitted they were wrong and zealously fought to undo the conviction and save Mr. Williams’ life,” said attorney Tricia Rojo Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project in a statement. “That is not justice. And we must all question any system that would allow this to occur.”
Williams had been faced with execution twice before following his 2001 conviction for the murder of Gayle, a social worker and former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. First, in 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court halted execution plans and appointed a special master to review DNA testing on the handle of the murder weapon, the butcher knife that was used to stab Gayle 43 times and was left lodged in her neck.
Williams’ attorneys said DNA experts who reviewed the results determined that he was not the source of DNA found on the knife. But the special master sent the case back to the Missouri Supreme Court, and a second execution date was set for August 2017.
Then, hours before Williams was set to be executed, then-Gov. Eric Greitens called it off and appointed a panel of five retired judges to investigate the DNA evidence. The board, however, was dissolved by Parson in June 2023 and never issued its final report.
Faced with the DNA evidence and other new information in Williams’ case, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell sought to toss out the conviction on numerous grounds, including the results of the DNA testing and constitutional violations during the jury selection process.
But the night before an evidentiary hearing was set to take place, Bell’s office received new test results indicating DNA on the knife handle was consistent with that of a prosecutor who worked on Williams’ case and a former investigator with the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
Williams’ attorneys said in a filing that the DNA results confirmed they handled the knife without gloves, contaminating the evidence.
With the DNA evidence spoiled, Williams and Bell, the prosecuting attorney, reached an agreement under which Williams would enter a no-contest plea to murder in the first degree with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Gayle’s family indicated they did not support executing Williams, according to court filings, and in August, a judge signed off on the agreement. But Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, objected to the plea.
The state supreme court went on to block the plan and ordered an evidentiary hearing on Williams’ claims of innocence.
During the proceeding last month, a trial attorney who tried the 2001 case said that he removed one Black prospective juror because he looked like Williams. When asked whether he struck the juror because of his race, the prosecutor, Keith Larner said, “No. Absolutely not,” according to court records. Larner said that he believed the jury, composed of 11 White people and one Black person, was fair.
The prosecutor also acknowledged that he handled the murder weapon without gloves at least five times during witness preparation sessions before the trial, as he believed the investigation into Gayle’s killing was finished.
At the end of the hearing, the St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney’s Office told the court that it conceded the “constitutional error of mishandling evidence” in Williams’ trial, and said “clear and convincing evidence” of numerous constitutional errors in his prosecution were presented.
Still, on Sept. 12, the judge declined to toss out Williams’ conviction and sentence. The Missouri Supreme Court then denied relief.
In urging the Supreme Court to intervene, Williams’ lawyers had asked the justices to wait until they have decided another death penalty case involving an Oklahoma inmate, which they said raises the same issues. The high court is poised to hear arguments Oct. 9 in Richard Glossip’s effort to toss out his conviction due to concerns about the fairness of his trial.
“The ever-present undercurrent of residual doubt as to Mr. Williams’ innocence plagues this case, even as his execution looms,” his attorneys wrote in a filing with the high court. “Mr. Williams’ conviction and death sentence were secured through a trial riddled with constitutional errors, racism, and bad faith, much of which only came to light recently.”
They called his conviction a “grave miscarriage of justice” and said executing him would be an “unthinkable, irreversible travesty.”
Top officials in Missouri opposed the request to call off the execution, claiming that Williams has engaged in a “strategy of extreme delay” in bringing the claims and accusing him of attempting to “manufacture another emergency through dilatory tactics.”
“The state of Missouri, crime victims, for whom the case goes on for decades without resolution, and the criminal justice system are all harmed by endless litigation of meritless claims,” Bailey wrote in a filing with the Supreme Court.
Williams’ was charged more than a year after Gayle’s death. Prosecutors claim that he broke into her home in University City, a suburb of St. Louis, and, after hearing water running in the shower upstairs, found a butcher knife and waited. After Gayle came down the stairs, Williams attacked and stabbed her 43 times, then left with her purse and husband’s laptop, law enforcement officials said.
Prosecutors said Williams also took a jacket that he used to conceal the blood on his shirt. His girlfriend later noticed that he was wearing a jacket despite the summer weather, and after he removed it, saw that Williams’ shirt was bloody, according to court filings.
The girlfriend also testified that she saw the laptop in the car and the purse in its trunk, and claimed Williams confessed to killing Gayle, according to court records. Roughly 10 months after Gayle’s death, and after her family offered reward money, a man named Henry Cole, who was a cellmate with Williams when he was in jail on unrelated charges, claimed he confessed to murdering Gayle, prosecutors said.
Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.
Edmund, Okla. — An Oklahoma city has agreed to pay more than $7 million to a former death row inmate who was exonerated after nearly 50 years in prison, making him the longest-serving inmate to be declared innocent of a crime.
The Edmond City Council voted without comment on Monday to settle the lawsuit filed by Glynn Ray Simmons, 71, against the Oklahoma City suburb and a former police detective for $7.15 million.
“Mr. Simmons spent a tragic amount of time incarcerated for a crime he did not commit,” his attorney, Elizabeth Wang, said in a statement. “Although he will never get that time back, this settlement with Edmond will allow him to move forward” with his life.
The lawsuit makes similar claims against Oklahoma City and a retired Oklahoma City detective who also investigated the robbery and shooting that wound up putting Simmons behind bars. Those claims aren’t affected by the settlement and are still pending.
Wang noted in her statement that, “We are very much looking forward to holding them accountable at trial in March,” according to KWTV.
A spokesperson for Oklahoma City said Wednesday that the city doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
The lawsuit alleges police falsified a report by stating that a witness who was wounded in the shooting identified Simmons and co-defendant Don Roberts as the two who robbed a store and shot a clerk.
The lawsuit also alleges police withheld evidence that the witness identified two other people as suspects.
Simmons was released from prison in July 2023 after a judge vacated his conviction and sentence and ordered a new trial.
District Attorney Vickie Behenna announced in September that she wouldn’t retry the case because there is no longer physical evidence against Simmons.
In December, a judge exonerated Simmons, saying there was “clear and convincing evidence” that he didn’t commit the crime and Simmons has received $175,000 from the state of Oklahoma for wrongful conviction.
Simmons served 48 years, one month and 18 days, making him the longest imprisoned U.S. inmate to be exonerated, according to data kept by The National Registry of Exonerations.
Simmons, who has maintained that he was in Louisiana at the time of the crime, and Roberts were both convicted of the murder of the liquor store clerk, Carolyn Sue Rogers, and sentenced to death.
Their sentences were reduced to life in prison in 1977 after U.S. Supreme Court rulings related to capital punishment and Roberts was released on parole in 2008.
In an opulent hall in the Apostolic Palace framed in marble and adorned with Renaissance murals, Gov. Gavin Newsom waited in a line of governors, mayors and scientists for an opportunity to greet Pope Francis.
Pope Francis, however, had other topics on his mind besides the warming planet.
“I was struck by how he immediately brought up the issue of the death penalty and how proud he was of the work we’re doing in California,” Newsom said afterward. “I was struck by that because I wasn’t anticipating that, especially in the context of this convening.”
The talk was brief and informal. But the politically astute head of the Roman Catholic Church still took advantage of the moment to support one of Newsom’s most controversial actions as governor.
Through executive order two months after his inauguration, Newsom issued a temporary moratorium on the death penalty and ordered the dismantling of the state’s execution chambers at San Quentin State Prison. Families of murder victims criticized the decision, and legal scholars called it an abuse of power.
Newsom’s refusal to impose the death penalty could hurt him politically if he runs for president.
As a Catholic, however, the governor’s decree is in line with the church and the pope’s teachings.
Newsom said recent polls conducted by his political advisors show soft support for a ban.
“We constantly put it in our surveys that I do,” Newsom said in an interview with The Times. “It’s in the margin. But I’m thinking a lot about this beyond that because we’re reimagining death row. I’m thinking about when I’m leaving; I mean, I’ve been pretty honest about that. I’m trying to figure out what more can I do in this space.”
There were more than 730 inmates on death row when Newsom took office. Death row at San Quentin was the largest of any prison in the Western Hemisphere. Under his plan to reform the prison to emphasize rehabilitation, Newsom said California is just weeks from emptying death row entirely.
The governor said he was outspoken about his opposition to capital punishment when he campaigned in 2018. He endorsed the 2012 and 2016 ballot measures to abolish the death penalty.
“I campaigned very openly as lieutenant governor, as governor. I went out of my way to say, ‘If you elect me, this is what I’m going to do,’” Newsom said. “And also I have the legal authority. So I wasn’t challenging that.”
Currently, 21 of the 50 states impose the death penalty. The remaining 29 either have no death penalty or paused executions due to executive action — including California, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Newsom’s moratorium might not play well with voters in some swing states in a potential presidential campaign, adding to perceptions that leftist California and the Democratic governor are soft on crime and misaligned with the rest of the nation. The governor has repeatedly dismissed speculation that he’s eyeing the White House, and he has actively campaigned for President Biden’s reelection.
Kevin Eckery, a political consultant who has worked with the Catholic Church in California, said the death penalty isn’t going to be a deciding factor in an election.
“Nationally, the death penalty has been carried out so infrequently for the last 50 years that I don’t see people voting based on your position on [the] death penalty,” Eckery said. “They are going to vote on pocketbook issues. They are going to vote on other things, but not that issue.”
The Catholic Church has long said the death penalty could be justified only in rare situations. Francis updated church doctrine in 2018 to say “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
Newsom lunched in an arched courtyard covered in jasmine at the American Academy in Rome after he, in a speech at the Vatican, accused former President Trump of “open corruption” by soliciting campaign donations from oil executives.
Sitting in a weathered wood chair under the shade of a tree, the governor explained how his Catholic background and the inequities in the criminal justice system influenced his refusal to sign off on executions as governor.
His paternal grandparents were devout Catholics, and his late father, William Newsom, who served as a state appellate court justice, went to church every day growing up, he said.
Later in life, Newsom’s father considered himself “a Catholic of the distance,” the governor said, and “kind of pushed away” because of the politics of the church.
Newsom said Jesuit teachings at Santa Clara University, where he attended college, spoke a language he appreciated “of faith and works.” His own religious beliefs, he said, have always been exercised “around a civic frame.”
“The Bible teaches many parts, one body,” Newsom said, mentioning a quote he often references. “One part suffers, we all suffer, and this notion of communitarianism.
“You can’t get out of Santa Clara University without the requisite studies and sort of a religious baseline: God and common thought type frames,” he said.
As a Catholic and San Francisco native, Newsom said his beliefs follow “the Spirit of St. Francis” and the idea of being good to others, but not necessarily a strict religious doctrine.
The governor said he attended the private Catholic school École Notre Dame des Victoires in San Francisco for a short time during early elementary school. He said his family often attended Glide Memorial, a nondenominational church in San Francisco. The governor said he attended church on Easter with his family.
Newsom mentioned religion at other points during his trip, telling reporters outside the hall where he spoke at the Vatican about the importance of the bridge between science and the pope’s moral authority on climate change.
“As we know from church, it’s faith and works,” Newsom said. “So, as we pray, we move our feet. It’s that action with our passion.”
Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, said it’s smart for politicians in either party to talk about faith.
“We’ve learned over the last 30 years that presidential candidates in general benefit when they can be shown to be religious, or practicing their religious faith,” Philpott said.
Newsom said he didn’t want to overplay the influence of religion on his position on the death penalty, which his father also opposed.
His father and grandfather were involved in the case of Pete Pianezzi, a friend who was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting and killing a gambler and busboy in Los Angeles in 1937.
Pianezzi escaped the death penalty by a single vote and served 13 years in prison. He was later exonerated.
Even if it were possible to limit inequity and wrongful convictions in the criminal justice system, Newsom said he would still be against the death penalty.
“It just never made sense to me, the basic paradigm, that we were going to kill people to communicate to the general public that killing is wrong,” he said. “I could never understand that. I could never sanction that.”
Idaho halted the execution of serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech on Wednesday after medical team members repeatedly failed to find a vein where they could establish an intravenous line to carry out the lethal injection.Creech, 73, has been in prison half a century, convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of several more. He was already serving a life term when he beat a fellow inmate, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, to death in 1981 — the crime for which he was to be executed.Creech, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the U.S., was wheeled into the execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution on a gurney at 10 a.m.Three medical team members tried eight times to establish an IV, Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt told a news conference afterward. In some cases, they couldn’t access the vein, and in others they could but had concerns about vein quality. They attempted sites in his arms, legs, hands and feet. At one point, a medical team member left to gather more supplies.The warden announced he was halting the execution at 10:58 a.m.The corrections department said its death warrant for Creech would expire, and that it was considering next steps. While other medical procedures might allow for the execution, the state is mindful of the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Tewalt said.Creech’s attorneys immediately filed a new motion for a stay in U.S. District Court, saying “the badly botched execution attempt” proves the department’s “inability to carry out a humane and constitutional execution.” The court granted the stay after Idaho confirmed it would not try again to execute him before the death warrant expired; the state will have to obtain another warrant if it wants to carry out the execution.“This is what happens when unknown individuals with unknown training are assigned to carry out an execution,” the Federal Defender Services of Idaho said in a written statement. “This is precisely the kind of mishap we warned the State and the Courts could happen when attempting to execute one of the country’s oldest death-row inmates.”Six Idaho officials, including Attorney General Raul Labrador, and four news media representatives, including an Associated Press reporter, were on hand to witness the attempt — which was to be Idaho’s first execution in 12 years.The execution team was made up entirely of volunteers, the corrections department said. Those tasked with inserting the IVs and administering the lethal drug had medical training, but their identities were kept secret. They wore white balaclava-style face coverings and navy scrub caps to conceal their faces.With each attempt to insert an IV, the medical team cleaned the skin with alcohol, injected a numbing solution, cleaned the skin again and then attempted to place the IV catheter. Each attempt took several minutes, with medical team members palpating the skin and trying to position the needles.Creech frequently looked toward his family members and representatives, who were sitting in a separate witness room. His arms were strapped to the table, but he often extended his fingers toward them.He appeared to mouth “I love you” to someone in the room on occasion.After the execution was halted, the warden approached Creech and whispered to him for several minutes, giving his arm a squeeze.A few hours afterward, Labrador released a statement saying that “justice had been delayed again.”“Our duty is to seek justice for the many victims and their families who experienced the brutality and senselessness of his actions,” the attorney general wrote.Creech’s attorneys filed a flurry of late appeals hoping to forestall his execution. They included claims that his clemency hearing was unfair, that it was unconstitutional to kill him because he was sentenced by a judge rather than a jury — and that the state had not provided enough information about how it obtained the lethal drug, pentobarbital, or how it was to be administered.But the courts found no grounds for leniency. Creech’s last chance — a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court — was denied a few hours before the scheduled execution Wednesday.On Tuesday night, Creech spent time with his wife and ate a last meal including fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and ice cream.A group of about 15 protesters gathered outside the prison Wednesday, at one point singing “Amazing Grace.”An Ohio native, Creech has spent most of his life behind bars in Idaho. He was acquitted of a killing in Tucson, Arizona, in 1973 — authorities nevertheless believe he did it, as he used the victim’s credit card to travel to Oregon. He was later convicted of a 1974 killing in Oregon and one in California, where he traveled after earning a weekend pass from a psychiatric hospital.Later that year, Creech was arrested in Idaho after killing John Wayne Bradford and Edward Thomas Arnold, two house painters who had picked him and his girlfriend up while they were hitchhiking.He was serving a life sentence for those murders in 1981 when he beat Jensen to death. Jensen was disabled and serving time for car theft.Jensen’s family members described him during Creech’s clemency hearing last month as a gentle soul who loved hunting and being outdoors. Jensen’s daughter was 4 years old when he died, and she spoke about how painful it was to grow up without a father.Creech’s supporters say he is a deeply changed man. Several years ago he married the mother of a correctional officer, and former prison staffers said he was known for writing poetry and expressing gratitude for their work.During his clemency hearing, Ada County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jill Longhorst did not dispute that Creech can be charming. But she said he is nevertheless a psychopath — lacking remorse and empathy.Last year, Idaho lawmakers passed a law authorizing execution by firing squad when lethal injection is not available. Prison officials have not yet written a standard operating policy for the use of firing squad, nor have they constructed a facility where a firing squad execution could occur. Both would have to happen before the state could attempt to use the new law, which would likely trigger several legal challenges.Other states have also had trouble carrying out lethal injections.Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey paused executions for several months to conduct an internal review after officials called off the lethal injection of Kenneth Eugene Smith in November 2022 — the third time since 2018 Alabama had been unable to conduct executions due to problems with IV lines.Smith in January became the first person to be put to death using nitrogen gas. He shook and convulsed for several minutes on the death chamber gurney during the execution. Idaho does not allow execution by nitrogen hypoxia.In 2014, Oklahoma officials tried to halt a lethal injection when the prisoner, Clayton Lockett, began writhing after being declared unconscious. He died after 43 minutes; a review found his IV line came loose.
(Video: KBOI, IDOC – IDAHO DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, CNN via CNN Newsource) —
Idaho halted the execution of serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech on Wednesday after medical team members repeatedly failed to find a vein where they could establish an intravenous line to carry out the lethal injection.
Creech, 73, has been in prison half a century, convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of several more. He was already serving a life term when he beat a fellow inmate, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, to death in 1981 — the crime for which he was to be executed.
Creech, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the U.S., was wheeled into the execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution on a gurney at 10 a.m.
Three medical team members tried eight times to establish an IV, Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt told a news conference afterward. In some cases, they couldn’t access the vein, and in others they could but had concerns about vein quality. They attempted sites in his arms, legs, hands and feet. At one point, a medical team member left to gather more supplies.
The warden announced he was halting the execution at 10:58 a.m.
The corrections department said its death warrant for Creech would expire, and that it was considering next steps. While other medical procedures might allow for the execution, the state is mindful of the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Tewalt said.
Idaho Department of Correction via AP
FILE – This image provided by the Idaho Department of Correction shows Thomas Eugene Creech on Jan. 9, 2009. Idaho on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024, halted the execution of serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech, one of the longest-serving death row inmates in the U.S., after a medical team repeatedly failed to find a vein where they could establish an intravenous line to carry out the lethal injection. (Idaho Department of Correction via AP, File)
Creech’s attorneys immediately filed a new motion for a stay in U.S. District Court, saying “the badly botched execution attempt” proves the department’s “inability to carry out a humane and constitutional execution.” The court granted the stay after Idaho confirmed it would not try again to execute him before the death warrant expired; the state will have to obtain another warrant if it wants to carry out the execution.
“This is what happens when unknown individuals with unknown training are assigned to carry out an execution,” the Federal Defender Services of Idaho said in a written statement. “This is precisely the kind of mishap we warned the State and the Courts could happen when attempting to execute one of the country’s oldest death-row inmates.”
Six Idaho officials, including Attorney General Raul Labrador, and four news media representatives, including an Associated Press reporter, were on hand to witness the attempt — which was to be Idaho’s first execution in 12 years.
The execution team was made up entirely of volunteers, the corrections department said. Those tasked with inserting the IVs and administering the lethal drug had medical training, but their identities were kept secret. They wore white balaclava-style face coverings and navy scrub caps to conceal their faces.
With each attempt to insert an IV, the medical team cleaned the skin with alcohol, injected a numbing solution, cleaned the skin again and then attempted to place the IV catheter. Each attempt took several minutes, with medical team members palpating the skin and trying to position the needles.
Creech frequently looked toward his family members and representatives, who were sitting in a separate witness room. His arms were strapped to the table, but he often extended his fingers toward them.
He appeared to mouth “I love you” to someone in the room on occasion.
After the execution was halted, the warden approached Creech and whispered to him for several minutes, giving his arm a squeeze.
A few hours afterward, Labrador released a statement saying that “justice had been delayed again.”
“Our duty is to seek justice for the many victims and their families who experienced the brutality and senselessness of his actions,” the attorney general wrote.
Creech’s attorneys filed a flurry of late appeals hoping to forestall his execution. They included claims that his clemency hearing was unfair, that it was unconstitutional to kill him because he was sentenced by a judge rather than a jury — and that the state had not provided enough information about how it obtained the lethal drug, pentobarbital, or how it was to be administered.
But the courts found no grounds for leniency. Creech’s last chance — a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court — was denied a few hours before the scheduled execution Wednesday.
On Tuesday night, Creech spent time with his wife and ate a last meal including fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and ice cream.
A group of about 15 protesters gathered outside the prison Wednesday, at one point singing “Amazing Grace.”
An Ohio native, Creech has spent most of his life behind bars in Idaho. He was acquitted of a killing in Tucson, Arizona, in 1973 — authorities nevertheless believe he did it, as he used the victim’s credit card to travel to Oregon. He was later convicted of a 1974 killing in Oregon and one in California, where he traveled after earning a weekend pass from a psychiatric hospital.
Later that year, Creech was arrested in Idaho after killing John Wayne Bradford and Edward Thomas Arnold, two house painters who had picked him and his girlfriend up while they were hitchhiking.
He was serving a life sentence for those murders in 1981 when he beat Jensen to death. Jensen was disabled and serving time for car theft.
Jensen’s family members described him during Creech’s clemency hearing last month as a gentle soul who loved hunting and being outdoors. Jensen’s daughter was 4 years old when he died, and she spoke about how painful it was to grow up without a father.
Creech’s supporters say he is a deeply changed man. Several years ago he married the mother of a correctional officer, and former prison staffers said he was known for writing poetry and expressing gratitude for their work.
During his clemency hearing, Ada County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jill Longhorst did not dispute that Creech can be charming. But she said he is nevertheless a psychopath — lacking remorse and empathy.
Last year, Idaho lawmakers passed a law authorizing execution by firing squad when lethal injection is not available. Prison officials have not yet written a standard operating policy for the use of firing squad, nor have they constructed a facility where a firing squad execution could occur. Both would have to happen before the state could attempt to use the new law, which would likely trigger several legal challenges.
Other states have also had trouble carrying out lethal injections.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey paused executions for several months to conduct an internal review after officials called off the lethal injection of Kenneth Eugene Smith in November 2022 — the third time since 2018 Alabama had been unable to conduct executions due to problems with IV lines.
Smith in January became the first person to be put to death using nitrogen gas. He shook and convulsed for several minutes on the death chamber gurney during the execution. Idaho does not allow execution by nitrogen hypoxia.
In 2014, Oklahoma officials tried to halt a lethal injection when the prisoner, Clayton Lockett, began writhing after being declared unconscious. He died after 43 minutes; a review found his IV line came loose.
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A U.S. appeals court panel on Friday declined to delay Idaho’s scheduled execution next week of one of the nation’s longest-serving death row inmates.
Thomas Creech was sentenced to death in 1983 for killing a fellow prison inmate, David Jensen, with a battery-filled sock. Creech, 73, had previously been convicted of four murders and was already serving life in prison when he killed Jensen.
He is also suspected of several other killings dating back half a century.
His attorneys had asked a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in San Francisco to delay Creech’s death by lethal injection, set for Wednesday.
They said they needed additional time to pursue a claim that, under the nation’s evolving standards of decency, his death sentence should be set aside because it was issued by a judge — not a jury. Among people on death row around the country, just 2.1% were sentenced to death by a judge alone, they said.
During oral arguments Thursday, the three judges expressed skepticism. They noted that while arguments about “evolving standards of decency” have been used to bar the execution of juveniles or people with severe developmental delays, Creech’s lawyers had presented little or no evidence that the people in the U.S. increasingly disfavor the execution of inmates who were sentenced by judges rather than juries.
“We gave you an opportunity to tell us what evidence you have of an evolving standard, and you haven’t provided anything,” Judge Jay Bybee told Jonah Horwitz, an attorney for Creech. “This feels like it’s a delay for delay’s sake and it’s a shot in the dark.”
The Idaho attorney general’s office opposed Creech’s request for a stay, arguing that Creech could have raised the issue long ago but waited until the last minute to try to forestall the execution: “This is a claim that was basically being held in the back pocket of Creech’s counsel, waiting until there was an actual execution that had been scheduled,” said Deputy Attorney General LaMont Anderson.
Creech’s attorneys in recent weeks have filed three other challenges regarding his execution. Two are with the U.S. District Court in Idaho, over the adequacy of his recent clemency hearing and over the state’s refusal to indicate where it obtained the drug it intends to use to kill him. The other is an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
An Ohio native, Creech’s history of being involved in or suspected of murders dates back half a century. In 1974, he was acquitted in the stabbing death of 70-year-old retiree Paul Shrader in Tuscon, Arizona; Creech was a cook who lived at the motel where Shrader’s body was found.
He then moved to Portland, Oregon, where he worked as a maintenance worker or sexton at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The body of 22-year-old William Joseph Dean was found in Creech’s living quarters on Aug. 7, 1974, and a grocery store worker in Salem, Sandra Jane Ramsamooj, was shot to death that same day.
In November, Creech and his 17-year-old girlfriend were hitchhiking in Idaho when two traveling housepainters picked them up. The pair — John Wayne Bradford, 40, and Edward Thomas Arnold, 34 — were found shot to death and partially buried along a highway. Creech was convicted. His girlfriend testified against him.
During police interrogations, Creech made some far-fetched claims — claims that his attorneys say he made under the influence of so-called truth serum — that he had killed 42 people, some in satanic rituals and others in contract killings for motorcycle gangs in several states. Authorities were unable to corroborate most of his claims, but said they did find two bodies based on information he provided and they did tie him to nine killings: two in Nevada, two in Oregon, two in Idaho and one each in Wyoming, Arizona and California.
Authorities initially didn’t believe one of the stories that Creech told them. Creech claimed that while he was being treated at the Oregon State Hospital following a suicide attempt, he earned a weekend pass, traveled to Sacramento and killed someone, and then returned to the treatment center.
Based on that information, California police retested fingerprints found at the home of murder victim Vivian Grant Robinson — and they matched Creech. They also realized he had called the treatment center from her home to say he’d be returning a day late. Creech was convicted of that case in 1980.
During Creech’s clemency hearing last month, the state offered new information — without supporting evidence — that Creech had committed another killing in California, that of Daniel Walker in San Bernardino County in 1974. Prosecutors there say they do not intend to file charges, noting Creech’s upcoming execution.
Creech was initially sentenced to death following his 1975 Idaho conviction, but after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that automatic death sentences were unconstitutional, it was converted to a life term. After killing Jensen he was again sentenced to death.
Alabama executed a convicted murderer with nitrogen gas Thursday, putting him to death with a first-of-its-kind method that once again put the U.S. at the forefront of the debate over capital punishment. The state said the method would be humane, but critics called it cruel and experimental.
Officials said Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8:25 p.m. at an Alabama prison after breathing pure nitrogen gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation. It marked the first time that a new execution method has been used in the United States since lethal injection, now the most commonly used method, was introduced in 1982.
The execution took about 22 minutes, and Smith appeared to remain conscious for several minutes. For at least two minutes, he appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney, sometimes pulling against the restraints. That was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing, until breathing was no longer perceptible.
In a final statement, Smith said: “Tonight Alabama causes humanity to take a step backwards. … I’m leaving with love, peace and light.”
He made the “I love you sign” with his hands toward family members who were witnesses. “Thank you for supporting me. Love, love all of you,” Smith said.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said afterward that the execution was justice for the murder-for-hire killing of 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett in 1988.
“After more than 30 years and attempt after attempt to game the system, Mr. Smith has answered for his horrendous crimes. … I pray that Elizabeth Sennett’s family can receive closure after all these years dealing with that great loss,” Ivey said in a statement.
The state had previously attempted to execute Smith in 2022, but the lethal injection was called off at the last minute because authorities couldn’t connect an IV line.
The execution came after a last-minute legal battle in which his attorneys contended the state was making him the test subject for an experimental execution method that could violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Federal courts rejected Smith’s bid to block it, with the latest ruling coming Thursday night from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who along with two other liberal justices dissented, wrote: “Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before. The world is watching.”
The majority justices did not issue any statements.
The state had predicted the nitrogen gas would cause unconsciousness within seconds and death within minutes. State Attorney General said late Thursday that nitrogen gas “was intended to be – and has now proved to be – an effective and humane method of execution.”
But some doctors and organizations raised alarm, and Smith’s attorneys had asked the Supreme Court to halt the execution to review claims that the method violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and deserves more legal scrutiny before it is used on a person.
“There is little research regarding death by nitrogen hypoxia. When the State is considering using a novel form of execution that has never been attempted anywhere, the public has an interest in ensuring the State has researched the method adequately and established procedures to minimize the pain and suffering of the condemned person,” Smith’s attorneys wrote.
In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote that Alabama has shrouded its execution protocol in secrecy, releasing only a heavily redacted version. She also said Smith should be allowed to obtain evidence about the execution protocol and to proceed with his legal challenge.
“That information is important not only to Smith, who has an extra reason to fear the gurney, but to anyone the State seeks to execute after him using this novel method,” Sotomayor wrote.
“Twice now this Court has ignored Smith’s warning that Alabama will subject him to an unconstitutional risk of pain,” Sotomayor wrote. “I sincerely hope that he is not proven correct a second time.”
Justice Elena Kagan wrote a separate dissent and was joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In his final hours, Smith met with family members and his spiritual adviser, according to a prison spokesperson.
He ate a last meal of T-bone steak, hash browns, toast and eggs slathered in A1 steak sauce, the Rev. Jeff Hood, his spiritual adviser, said by telephone before the execution was carried out.
“He’s terrified at the torture that could come. But he’s also at peace. One of the things he told me is he is finally getting out,” Hood said.
The victim’s son, Charles Sennett Jr., said in an interview with WAAY-TV that Smith “has to pay for what he’s done.”
“And some of these people out there say, ‘Well, he doesn’t need to suffer like that.’ Well, he didn’t ask Mama how to suffer?” the son said. “They just did it. They stabbed her – multiple times.”
The execution protocol called for Smith to be strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber – the same one where he was strapped down for several hours during the lethal injection attempt – and a “full facepiece supplied air respirator” to be placed over his face. After a chance to make a final statement, the warden, from another room, would activate the nitrogen gas. It would be administered through the mask for at least 15 minutes or “five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” according to the state protocol.
Sant’Egidio Community, a Vatican-affiliated Catholic charity based in Rome, had urged Alabama not to go through with the execution, saying the method is “barbarous” and “uncivilized” and would bring “indelible shame” to the state. And experts appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council cautioned they believe the execution method could violate the prohibition on torture.
Some states are looking for new ways to execute people because the drugs used in lethal injections have become difficult to find. Three states – Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma – have authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, but no state had attempted to use the untested method until now.
Smith’s attorneys had raised concerns that he could choke to death on his own vomit as the nitrogen gas flows. The state made a last-minute procedural change so he would not be allowed food in the eight hours leading up to the execution.
Sennett was found dead in her home March 18, 1988, with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of her neck. Smith was one of two men convicted in the killing. The other, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010.
Prosecutors said they were each paid $1,000 to kill Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance. The husband, Charles Sennett Sr., killed himself when the investigation focused on him as a suspect, according to court documents.
Smith’s 1989 conviction was overturned, but he was convicted again in 1996. The jury recommended a life sentence by 11-1, but a judge overrode that and sentenced him to death. Alabama no longer allows a judge to override a jury’s death penalty decision.
Christina Applegategot folks out of their seats at the Emmys … and it’s all because of her courage.
The “Dead to Me” star, who is dealing with her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, came out to a standing ovation as she presented the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.
Christina used a cane to get to the stage as the crowd rose to its feet and applauded.
Ya gotta see the video … she got emotional about the reception she was getting, and cracked a joke, saying … “You’re totally shaming me with disability by standing up.”
It’s great to see her involved at the Emmys … when she was up for a SAG award last year she said it would likely be her last award show as an actress because of MS.
At that award show she used a cane with a powerful message on it … “F U MS.” While her cane Monday night wasn’t fitted with any such note, Christina’s presence onstage said plenty.
If her acting career is over, as Christina’s predicted, she could certainly still do award show presenting — she had the Emmys crowd wrapped around her finger.
The state of Alabama is seeking to use an untested method to execute a man on death row whose execution was already botched once before.
Prosecutors want to push forward with executing 58-year-old Kenneth Eugene Smith using nitrogen hypoxia, which would involve him inhaling nitrogen without the presence of oxygen, effectively causing suffocation.
During a scheduled execution last November, Smith survived four hours tightly strapped to the execution gurney. Executioners prodded him repeatedly near his collarbone and arms, failing to find a vein to inject him with a combination of chemicals that was supposed to kill him.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall is looking to set a new date for Smith’s execution.
“It is a travesty that Kenneth Smith has been able to avoid his death sentence for nearly 35 years after being convicted of the heinous murder-for-hire slaying of an innocent woman, Elizabeth Sennett,” Marshall said in a statement on Friday.
Smith was convicted in the 1980s for killing Sennett, whose pastor husband, Charles Sennett, had hired Smith and another person, John Forrest Parker, to kill her so he could cash out on the insurance policy, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
In 2022, Smith’s attorneys sought to stay his execution, while the state kept moving to push it forward.
The day Smith was scheduled to be executed in November 2022, executioners struggled to access a vein for the lethal injection. The execution team was able to establish one of two necessary intravenous lines into one of Smith’s veins, but couldn’t successfully establish a second one before his death warrant expired at midnight, The Associated Press reported. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm said executioners tried “several locations” on Smith, AL.com reported at the time.
“At some point before midnight, Defendants [ADOC] stopped their attempted execution of Mr. Smith, but not before inflicting grave physical pain and emotional trauma, the likes of which the human brain is not able to process,” Smith’s attorneys alleged in a motion against ADOC.
Smith was left on the gurney for hours, unaware that his execution had been stayed.
Alabama has botched multiple executions involving the highly controversial lethal injection process in recent years, failing to access veins — including that of Alan Eugene Miller, once known to be the “only living execution survivor.” (Smith’s attorneys said that Smith has now joined Miller as one of the only two execution survivors in the U.S.)
“Alabama has a dismal record of ‘getting it right’ when it comes to executions – the state botched three lethal injection executions in 2022. It is the very last state that should now experiment using an unprecedented, untested procedure with unknown consequences,” Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told HuffPost.
Smith had originally requested death by nitrogen hypoxia. He is not the first inmate to request an alternate execution method. Two inmates in Oklahoma last year requested death by firing squad in an attempt to avoid the possibility of prolonged pain during the lethal injection process. (While the lethal injection process has been marketed as a “humane” way to kill, the experience has been compared to the sensation of being exposed to a chemical fire.)
A heavily redacted 41-page document detailing the protocol for nitrogen hypoxia, a never-before-used procedure, says that a mask will be placed on the individual’s face. “After the nitrogen gas is introduced, it will be administered for 15 minutes or five minutes following a flatline indication on the EKG, whichever is longer,” the document reads. The procedure causes people to suffocate to death due to a lack of oxygen, and it’s permitted in Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi.
The Alabama Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. Smith’s attorneys declined to comment.
