Capital Punishment

Dr. Joel Zivot stared at the autopsy reports. The language was dry and clinical, in stark contrast to the weight of what they contained — detailed, graphic accounts of the bodies of inmates executed by lethal injection in Georgia.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has delayed three death row inmates' 2021 executions as the state's unofficial death penalty moratorium continues. 

Updated at 11:36 a.m. ET

The Justice Department has put to death Daniel Lee, 47, marking the first federal execution since 2003, after a chaotic overnight series of court rulings.

Lee had been convicted of killing three people, including a child, as part of a broader racketeering scheme to fund a white supremacist cause. He had waited more than 20 years on federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind.

Updated at 12:30 pm ET

A federal judge in Washington has blocked federal executions scheduled for this week, citing concerns that the lethal injection protocol involved is "very likely to cause extreme pain and needless suffering."

Judge Tanya Chutkan said the last-minute ruling only hours before executions were set to resume for the first time in 17 years was "unfortunate," but she blamed the Justice Department for racing ahead before legal challenges had been fully aired.

Capital punishment is on the decline in the United States, with only 13 new death sentences and seven executions so far this year.

But the U.S. Justice Department is moving in the other direction. Authorities are preparing the death chamber in Terre Haute, Ind., for the first federal executions in 17 years, starting Monday.

Death row inmates, their spiritual advisers and even one set of victims' relatives are moving to the courts to try to stop or delay the process. They're using a novel argument: the coronavirus pandemic.

After nearly two decades, the federal government will once again begin executing criminals, the Justice Department announced Monday. Four inmates convicted of murdering children are set to be put to death by lethal injection.

Majority Republicans in the Ohio House are discussing doing away with the death penalty, as executions remain on hold because of trouble obtaining lethal injection drugs. 

Updated at 11:45 a.m. ET

A judge has blocked the U.S. government's plan to begin executing federal prisoners for the first time in nearly 20 years. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday halting four executions set to begin next month over concerns about the government's lethal injection method.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine says for the first time in three years, there likely won't be an execution in the state this year, as officials struggle to find lethal injection drugs. 

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has ruled Ohio's current lethal injection system does not pose an unconstitutional risk of suffering to condemned inmates. 

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is dismissing a legislator's proposal to use fentanyl to execute death row inmates as the state struggles to find a lethal injection protocol that will be approved by the courts. 

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine says the state is having difficulty finding a new set of lethal execution drugs following concerns raised by a judge over the constitutionality of Ohio's current protocol. 

The Justice Department's announcement that the federal government will resume its use of capital punishment has raised questions about the drugs it plans to use.

Updated at 4:55 p.m. ET

The U.S. government is poised to carry out the death penalty for the first time in nearly two decades, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to change the federal execution protocol to include capital punishment, the Justice Department said.

The bitter battle over the death penalty continued Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court with the highly unusual release of explanatory statements from the court's conservatives as to why they reached such apparently contradictory decisions in two death cases in February and March.

The Marion man whose 1994 death sentence for the rape and slaying of a woman was overturned by an appeals court has been resentenced to 26 years to life in prison. 

Governor Mike DeWine has delayed next month's execution of a condemned Ohio man and ordered the prison system to look at alternative lethal injection drugs.

The Washington Supreme Court has struck down the state's death penalty, saying that it is imposed arbitrarily and with racial bias.

"We are confident that the association between race and the death penalty is not attributed to random chance," the justices wrote in a majority opinion.

The Ohio man convicted of killing three down-and-out men lured by fake online job offers has appealed his death penalty conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Republican Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters says a new ruling from the Catholic Church stating the death penalty is always inadmissible hasn't changed his stance that it is sometimes necessary. 

The Catholic Church now formally considers the death penalty "inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person" and is pledging to work for its abolition worldwide.

It's a shift for the church, which used to consider the death penalty a "means of safeguarding the common good" in response to "certain crimes." The update to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the book of official teachings of the church, was announced Thursday.