The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/capital-punishment/)
Dimitrios Pagourtzis was charged as an adult, but he can’t be sentenced to death because of a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In Texas, he can’t be sentenced to life without parole as the result of a 2013 law that banned the practice for minors.
Juan Castillo, 37, was put to death Wednesday evening for the 2003 robbery and murder of Tommy Garcia Jr. in San Antonio. The execution had been postponed three times since last May. It was the 11th execution in the U.S. this year.
In an election-year move, Gov. Bruce Rauner says capital punishment for mass killers and people who kill police officers is “very good policy.” The proposal faces long odds in the Democrat-controlled legislature.
Robert McCoy of Louisiana did not get the “assistance of counsel” guaranteed by the Constitution when his own lawyer told a jury that he shot his estranged
wife’s mother, stepfather, and son to death. The high court divided 6-3, with Justice Samuel Alito arguing that McCoy’s lawyer didn’t admit that he was legally guilty.
The state’s supreme court unanimously upholds plans for the execution of Scott Raymond Dozier. Nevada plans to use drugs that never have been used in lethal injections.
Oklahoma, Alabama and Mississippi have authorized nitrogen for executions but scientific data is lacking on its use. Critics fear that nitrogen will be as problematic as lethal injections.
The state reset Robert Butts’ execution for killing an off-duty prison guard for Friday night after the state Board of Pardons and Paroles delayed the execution for reasons it did not explain.
The high court on Monday agreed to hear the appeal of a Missouri man on death row who argues the state’s death penalty procedures will cause him immense suffering. Russell Bucklew argues that his execution would cause him needless suffering because of a rare disease.
Erick Davila, who killed a 5-year-old girl and her grandmother in a gang-related shooting at a child’s birthday party in Fort Worth a decade ago was executed Wednesday evening after the Supreme Court rejected his final appeal.
Alabama executed 83-year-old Walter Leroy Moody on Thursday night for the 1989 pipe bombing death of a federal judge. He became the oldest inmate executed in the U.S. since the return of executions in the 1970s,