After two trips to the Supreme Court former death row inmate Richard Glossip is out on bond

Oklahoma District Judge Natalie Mai ordered former death row inmate Richard Glossip to be released from prison while awaiting a retrial, after 29 years behind bars. During these 29 years, Glossip famously faced several execution dates and ate his “last meal” three times, reported Juristnews.

Mai set the bail at $500,000, with release contingent upon Glossip complying with certain conditions, such as wearing an electronic monitoring device, observing a curfew, remaining within the state of Oklahoma, and refraining from speaking to any witnesses.

The order cited a letter written by the attorney general in April 2023 to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, which stated that the record does not support that Glossip is guilty of first-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt. Under the Oklahoma Constitution, bail must be granted unless there is clear and convincing evidence of guilt, leading the court to conclude that it could not reasonably deny bail.

The case stems from a murder-for-hire plot targeting Glossip’s former boss, Barry Van Treese, in 1997. Purported co-conspirator Justin Sneed confessed at trial to beating Van Treese to death, and claimed Glossip offered him money to do so. Glossip maintained his innocence throughout his defense, denying that he had any involvement with the murder.

While Glossip was imprisoned, his case faced a series of legal challenges surrounding his right to a fair trial, eventually culminating in the February 2025 decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn his conviction and order a new trial. The court’s 5-3 ruling was largely based on the prosecution’s failure to consider evidence that Sneed’s testimony was false.

Following the decision, the prosecution indicated its intent to retry Glossip on the existing first-degree murder charges, but not to pursue the death penalty.

Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, stated that he is grateful that Judge Mai granted bond:

In doing so, she rejected the State’s claim that there is a strong case for guilt. For the first time in 29 years of being incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, during which he faced 9 execution dates and at 3 last meals, Mr. Glossip now has the chance to taste freedom while his defense team continues to pursue justice on his behalf against a system that the United States Supreme Court has found to be guilty of serious misconduct by state prosecutors.

In the bond order, Mai stated that “the Court hopes that a new trial, free of error, will provide all interested parties, and the citizens of Oklahoma, the closure they deserve.”

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Federal government brings back firing squad as method of execution

The Trump administration will allow firing squads and readopt lethal injection as part of a broader push to revive the death penalty, reported The New York Times.

In an accompanying report, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that decisions by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to pull back on capital punishment “inflicted untold damage on victims of crime, and, ultimately, to the rule of law itself.”

The Justice Department, he said, had reauthorized the use of pentobarbital to execute federal inmates and would also permit additional methods of execution, like the use of firing squads.

The 48-page report added that the Bureau of Prisons should follow the example of states that had expanded their execution protocols amid fights over the legality and availability of lethal injection drugs.

“The additional manners of execution that B.O.P. should consider adopting include the firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas — each of which the Supreme Court has found to be consistent with the Eighth Amendment,” the report said, referring to the part of the Bill of Rights that bars “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, called the moves “a stain on our nation’s history.”

Mr. Durbin accused the Justice Department of “turning back the clock by strengthening the barbaric practice of the federal death penalty — a cruel, immoral and often discriminatory form of punishment.”

President Trump had signaled the moves on his first day in office, signing an executive order to reinstitute capital punishment in the federal prison system. During the first Trump presidency, 13 people were executed on federal death row.

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland issued a moratorium on executions of federal inmates and halted the use of a lethal drug protocol using pentobarbital. In his final days in office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 convicted killers on federal death row.

The Trump administration faces one significant hurdle. Under the law, the federal government may only conduct executions in states that allow capital punishment and carry them out according to state protocols.

For years, federal executions have taken place in Indiana, which only allows for capital punishment by lethal injection.

The Justice Department, acknowledging that limitation in its report, recommends the federal government find a new location to conduct executions, in a state that allows other methods. Mississippi, the report states, allows executions by electrocution, or firing squad if lethal injection or other methods are not available.

The report called for the Bureau of Prisons to submit a report “detailing the options to relocate or expand federal death row, or to construct a second federal execution facility in a state that permits additional manners of execution.”

The firing squad has rarely been used in the United States, but has recently been authorized by several states as an alternative method if the states cannot procure lethal injection drugs. Before last year, the only firing squad executions in the country in modern times had been carried out by Utah, in 1977, 1996 and 2010, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group.

But in 2025, South Carolina, which had authorized the firing squad in 2021, executed three prisoners using the method.

In its Friday announcement, the administration said it was working on a regulation intended to cut years off the federal appeals process for state death penalty cases, though ultimately the courts have final say.

The department also said it planned to issue a regulation that would impose new limits on the ability of inmates sentenced to death to seek clemency or pardons from the federal government.

The report also suggested expanding the types of crimes, and the types of criminals, eligible for the federal death penalty in order to “correct gaps and deficiencies” in the current law. Congress would have to pass any such change into law.

The administration should consider proposing legislation, the report said, that would make eligible for the death penalty “murders of law enforcement officers; murders by aliens illegally in the United States; and murders constituted or committed in the commission of hate crimes, stalking, material support, or domestic violence.”

Much of the report centered on creating a new legal and regulatory framework to preserve the availability of the drug most often used to conduct executions.

Robin M. Maher, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the report seemed more focused on grievances with the Biden administration than a straightforward analysis of lethal injection protocol.

“It struck me as rather disingenuous in terms of reflecting the reality of the problems” with the use of pentobarbital in executions, Ms. Maher said.

Pentobarbital was first used in an execution in 2010, in Oklahoma, and soon became a common method by which to execute prisoners.

As with other drugs used in lethal injections, it faced legal challenges from prisoners and their lawyers, who said that it caused prisoners to suffer, but courts have allowed its use, and several states use it as their primary method. Still, some states have had trouble obtaining the drug because of pressure from medical and advocacy groups on drugmakers.

In January 2025, the Justice Department under Mr. Garland issued a memo saying that “there remains significant uncertainty about whether the use of pentobarbital as a single-drug lethal injection causes unnecessary pain and suffering.” The department wrote that federal authorities should not use the drug for executions until its effect was more clear.

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Man forgotten on death row has sentence overturned after 48 years

Texas’ highest criminal court has overturned the death sentence of a Harris County man who was on death row for nearly half a century, reported The Texas Tribune.

Clarence Curtis Jordan, 70, was first convicted in 1978 of murdering Joe L. Williams, a 40-year-old Houston grocer. Jordan, who is intellectually disabled, was then found in subsequent years to be incompetent and therefore could not be executed. But for almost four decades, he did not have an attorney to advocate for him and was seemingly forgotten on death row.

Jordan was finally appointed a new attorney in 2024 as news emerged that there were numerous delayed criminal appeals in Harris County, some of which were lost for more than a decade. The revelation came amid an effort by the county to reduce the backlog in its criminal courts.

Following new legal advocacy, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated Jordan’s death sentence in a Thursday ruling. The panel also sent the case back to Harris County for a new punishment proceeding.

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Ohio AG wants to end eight year moratorium on executions

The state’s outgoing Attorney General is again urging Ohio to resume executions, even though it is highly unlikely before the end of his term or Gov. Mike DeWine’s, reported Statehouse News Bureau.

Ohio’s death row wait time now stretches longer than 22 years, with more and more inmates dying from natural causes—or by suicide—than from a sentence, according to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s mandatory 2025 capital punishment report. The state ranks 12th of 28 states for its wait time.

“During my years as attorney general, not a single sentence has been carried out—a mockery of the justice system and of the dead and their families,” Yost writes in the report, released Wednesday. “Yet other states, which get their life-ending drugs from the same companies Ohio could, have found the will and a way to carry out these sentences since 2019.”

The de facto execution moratorium is closing in on eight years and extending the entirety of Gov. Mike DeWine’s tenure. DeWine has delayed every scheduled one since January 2019, some more than once, blaming pharmaceutical companies’ opposition to use of their products in the drug concoction that creates a lethal injection.

But with his time in office closing, DeWine has for months hinted at coming out against capital punishment altogether. That announcement hasn’t come yet.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, which opposes capital punishment, has asked DeWine to grant some death row inmates clemency.

“There is a real opportunity to address Ohio’s broken capital punishment system by reviewing individual cases and commuting sentences before it’s too late,” ACLU of Ohio Chief Policy and Advocacy Officer Jocelyn Rosnick wrote in an email statement.

More than 100 men and one woman are incarcerated on death row in Ohio, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections data.

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A sure sign the death penalty doesn't work

A man convicted of murder in Bay County who was sitting on death row has committed suicide in prison, reported WJHG-TV.

In 2008, Matthew Caylor raped and killed a 13-year-old girl named Melinda Hinson. She was staying with her family at a local motel, where she met Caylor. The motel maid found her body under the bed two days later.

The Georgia man was convicted of First-Degree Murder, Sexual Battery Involving Great Physical Force, and Aggravated Child Abuse in October 2009, and sentenced to death by an 8-4 jury vote. The case was one of dozens across the state where new sentencing hearings were ordered after a 2016 Florida Supreme Court ruling that death sentences required unanimous votes.

He was given a new sentencing hearing, and the judge determined he would remain on death row.

State Attorney Larry Basford confirmed Matthew Caylor committed suicide on Tuesday night. He says he committed suicide the same day as convicted killer Kayle Bates’ execution.

“Matthew Caylor was a sexual predator that had violated his parole in Georgia and came down here for a last hurrah in Bay County. After a trial and numerous appeals, he knew he was facing the same inevitable fate as Kayle Bates. By committing suicide, he saved the taxpayers of Florida a lot of money,” said Basford.

Matthew Caylor tried appealing his case once more earlier this year but got rejected by the state supreme court.

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SCOTUS grants relief to death row inmate seeking DNA testing

The US Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that a Texas death row inmate has the right to sue over the state’s laws governing DNA testing, reported Jurist. The majority opinion was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Ruben Gutierrez was convicted of capital murder in 1998. Since 2010, he has been unsuccessfully requesting DNA testing of crime scene evidence he claimed would prove he was not in the victim’s home the night of the murder. Texas’ Article 64 allows DNA testing where a “convicted person establishes by a preponderance of the evidence” that he “would not have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained through DNA testing.”

Gutierrez filed a §1983 lawsuit in federal court against Luis Saenz, the district attorney who has custody of the untested evidence. Gutierrez argued that Texas’ state post-conviction DNA testing procedures violated his liberty interests under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The trial court agreed and granted declaratory relief. However, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that Gutierrez lacked standing because his claimed injury was not redressable since a declaratory judgment would be unlikely to cause the prosecutor to allow testing. The defendants additionally argued to the Supreme Court that the prosecutor has several independent state-law grounds not to provide the DNA testing.

The Supreme Court disagreed and found Gutierrez had standing based on its precedent concerning standing for a due process claim against custodians of evidence. They explained that “if a federal court concluded that Texas’ postconviction DNA testing procedures violate due process, the state prosecutor’s justification for denying DNA testing would be eliminated, thereby removing the barrier between [Gutierrez] and the requested testing.” Furthermore, the possibility that “a prosecutor might eventually find another reason to deny a prisoner’s DNA testing request does not eliminate the prisoner’s standing to argue that the cited reasons violated his rights under the Due Process Clause.”

The defendants also argued that the case is moot after Sanez refused “Gutierrez’s DNA testing request even after the District Court issued the declaratory judgment.” The court disagreed, explaining that holding so “would allow defendants to manufacture mootness by ensuring that, no matter what procedures a court requires them to employ, the same substantive outcome will follow.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett issued a concurrence opinion stating she would reverse the Fifth Circuit’s decision on the sole basis that “it failed to consider the breadth of the relief that Gutierrez requested in his complaint.”

Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the majority, holding that it ignored that precedent “held that…declaratory judgment would redress the prisoner’s deprivation of DNA testing because it would ‘substantially’ alter the likelihood of the district attorney’s ordering DNA testing.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined Alito’s dissent. Thomas wrote separately to emphasize that “this Court has no business intervening in this case in the first place” because the original meaning of “liberty” in the Fourteenth Amendment “did not include entitlements to government-created benefits” and “likely referred only to freedom from physical restraint.”

While Gutierrez’s request for rehearing was pending in the Fifth Circuit, Texas scheduled his execution. The court had pre­vi­ous­ly issued a stay of exe­cu­tion to Gutierrez on July 16, 2024, just 20 min­utes before he was sched­uled to be executed.

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Inmate whose Supreme Court case changed threshold for executing persons with mental illness dies in prison

Scott Panetti, a convicted murderer diagnosed with schizophrenia who represented himself at trial in a 1920s-era cowboy costume while attempting to subpoena John F. Kennedy and Jesus as witnesses — and whose execution was stayed by a landmark Supreme Court ruling on capital punishment and mental illness — died on May 26 in a prison hospital in Galveston, Texas. He was 67.

The cause was acute hypoxic respiratory failure, according to the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, reported The New York Times.

In the 2007 case Panetti v. Quarterman, the U.S. Supreme Court raised the bar for executing the mentally ill, holding that an individual must have a “rational understanding” of why the state planned to put him to death. (Nathaniel Quarterman was director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.)

An earlier standard required only that a mentally ill person be aware that he or she was going to be executed and why.

“A prisoner’s awareness of the State’s rationale for an execution is not the same as a rational understanding of it,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s 5-4 majority.

Mr. Panetti was first diagnosed with a psychotic disorder when he was 20. He was hospitalized repeatedly for delusions and psychotic episodes over a decade before he killed the parents of his estranged second wife in 1992.

At a hearing to determine if he was competent to serve as his own lawyer, his first wife recalled an episode in which he was convinced that the devil possessed their home, leading him to bury their valuables in the yard. A jury ruled him competent to represent himself.

In his rambling opening statement at trial in 1995, wearing a big cowboy hat and a purple bandanna, he showed off a tattoo and spoke of bull riding and how his father looked like Colonel Sanders.

A standby lawyer at the trial called Mr. Panetti’s courtroom performance “trance-like” and “scary” and the procedure “a judicial farce.” He was found guilty and sentenced to death. 

For decades, prosecutors in Texas argued in state and federal courtrooms that Mr. Panetti was mentally competent to be executed. Although the Supreme Court made it harder to execute the insane when Mr. Panetti’s case came before it, the court did not commute his sentence. The case was returned to lower courts to further weigh his competency.

Testifying for Mr. Panetti, psychiatric experts who had diagnosed him with schizo-affective disorder said he was under the delusion that he was being put to death because of a battle between “the forces of the darkness and God and the angels and the forces of light.”

Texas prosecutors argued that he was faking it. The state said that secretly recorded conversations with his parents “provide conclusive evidence that Panetti has a rational understanding of the relationship between his crime and his punishment,” and that he “has been grossly exaggerating his symptoms while being observed.”

Greg Abbott, who was Texas’s attorney general then (he is now governor), said in 2014, “Panetti knows that he killed his in-laws while his wife and child looked on, and he knows that he has been sentenced to die for that crime.” The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 7-0 against commuting Mr. Panetti’s death sentence.

Texas’s push to execute him drew a national outcry. Opponents said imposing the death penalty on an insane person who had possibly been unaware of his actions crossed a moral line and violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

In December 2014, on the date that Mr. Panetti was scheduled to be put to death, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals in New Orleans stayed the execution and ordered a new competency hearing.

In 2022, while the case continued to wend its way through the courts, Mr. Panetti’s lawyer, Gregory Wiercoch, said, “It is unprecedented to be litigating on an execution competency claim for 20 years.”

The next year, a federal judge in Austin, Robert Pitman, ruled that Mr. Panetti should not be executed. “There are several reasons for prohibiting the execution of the insane,” the judge found, “including the questionable retributive value of executing an individual so wracked by mental illness that he cannot comprehend the ‘meaning and purpose of the punishment,’ as well as society’s intuition that such an execution ‘simply offends humanity.’ Scott Panetti is one of these individuals.”

Scott Louis Panetti was born on Feb. 28, 1958, in Hayward, Wis., one of four children of Louis and Yvonne (Empereur) Panetti. At 18, he enlisted in the Navy, and after an honorable discharge joined his parents in Fredericksburg, Texas, where they had moved to manage ranches.

He is survived by his sisters Victoria Panetti-Studer and Jacki Maenius; three children from his first marriage, Chase, Katrina and Mary Perry; a daughter from his second marriage, Amanda Panetti-Lamb; and three grandchildren.

In Fredericksburg, west of Austin, Mr. Panetti dressed in buckskin clothes and claimed to have fought in Vietnam, though he was 15 when the United States withdrew its forces from the country. His marriage to Jane Luckenbach ended in divorce. His second marriage, in 1989, to Sonja Alvarado, was rocky. Several times he was involuntarily committed to Kerrville State Hospital in the grip of delusional episodes.

In the summer of 1992, Ms. Alvarado left him, obtained a restraining order and, with their young daughter, moved to the home of her parents, Joe and Amanda Alvarado.

Mr. Panetti stalked the family, peering into the windows at night. One early morning in September 1992, he shaved his head, put on camouflage clothes and broke a glass door to his in-laws’ home. He shot Mr. and Mrs. Alvarado at close range with a rifle. He took his wife and daughter hostage and drove to a friend’s house, where he was living. He changed into a suit and surrendered to the police.

“I was crying the whole time,” Sonja Alvarado said in an interview 15 years later, when Mr. Panetti’s case reached the Supreme Court. “He told me he’d heard voices, that he didn’t know if he was going to kill us or let us go.”

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CREATORS: Richard Glossip's Twisted Journey Through America's Courts

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
April 8, 2025

Richard Glossip's twisted journey through the criminal justice system is both amazing and horrifying. Glossip, a condemned prisoner on Oklahoma's death row, was served his last meal three different times while sitting in a cell next to the death chamber.

On two separate occasions, cases bearing his name made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Today, Glossip is no longer on death row where he spent the better part of 27 years. He is awaiting a new trial after his latest visit to the Supreme Court resulted in his conviction being overturned.

Glossip received the death sentence after being convicted for the 1997 killing of his former boss, motel owner Barry Van Treese, in what prosecutors alleged was a murder-for-hire scheme. Justin Sneed admitted robbing Van Treese and beating him to death with a baseball bat but testified that Glossip promised to pay him $10,000 for the brutal murder. Sneed was the state's key witness against Glossip and was sentenced to life in prison.

Glossip has always maintained his innocence and refused to accept a plea deal. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to death. He appealed. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction indicating the case was "extremely weak." He was tried a second time in which he was again convicted and sentenced to death.

While on death row he was scheduled for execution nine separate times. After a botched execution in 2014, a group of death row inmates, including Glossip, led by my inmate Charles Warner, challenged Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol that consisted, in part, the drug midazolam.

Glossip became the lead petitioner after a lurid chain of events beginning with the group of inmates petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 13, 2015. Two days later, while the court was considering the petition, Warner was executed. A week later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The Court then stayed the surviving petitioners' executions and adopted Glossip's name as the lead petitioner.

Glossip v. Gross was argued before the high court on April 29, 2015. Justice Samuel Alito found the prisoners "failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the use of midazolam violates the Eighth Amendment."

Glossip stayed on death row and came precariously close to being executed on several occasions. While he waited, an independent investigation revealed that the prosecutors in his case deliberately destroyed key evidence, and potentially exculpatory evidence was never made available to Glossip. Despite the new revelations about prosecutorial misconduct, Glossip unsuccessfully sought post-conviction relief.

Then Glossip got his second chance before the Supreme Court. This past February, Glossip v. Oklahoma, the high court overturned his conviction finding "(T)he State allowed Sneed to testify falsely at Glossip's trial that he had never seen a psychiatrist. The newly disclosed evidence confirms that the State knew Sneed's testimony was false and did nothing to correct it."

Glossip's odyssey is not over yet. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who took the unusual step of asking the high court for a new trial, told the Associated Press he will request that Glossip remain in prison until prosecutors decide whether to retry him.

Drummond, said he plans to consult Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna, about whether to try Glossip again and whether to seek the death penalty, a lesser penalty of life in prison, or pursue lesser charges, like accessory to murder after the fact.

Behenna has previously said she would not consider the death penalty in the case, and Drummond recently agreed that while certain murder-for-hire cases can qualify for the death penalty, he doesn't believe the facts in Glossip's case justify the death penalty.

Glossip may yet be convicted a third time. However, he has spent nearly three decades trying to prove his innocence. He'll now get his chance.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Louisiana man scheduled for execution dies of natural causes

 A terminally ill man who spent over 30 years on death row in Louisiana for the killing of his stepson died days after a March date was scheduled for his execution by nitrogen gas, according to The Associated Press.

Christopher Sepulvado, 81, died Saturday at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, “from natural causes as a result of complications arising from his pre-existing medical conditions,” according to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections.

Sepulvado was charged with the 1992 killing of his 6-year-old stepson after the boy came home from school with soiled underwear. Sepulvado was accused of hitting him on the head with a screwdriver and immersing him in scalding water. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1993.

His attorney, federal public defender Shawn Nolan, said in a statement Sunday that doctors recently determined Sepulvado was terminally ill and recommended hospice care. Nolan described his client’s “significant” physical and cognitive decline in recent years.

“Christopher Sepulvado’s death overnight in the prison infirmary is a sad comment on the state of the death penalty in Louisiana,” Nolan said. “The idea that the state was planning to strap this tiny, frail, dying old man to a chair and force him to breathe toxic gas into his failing lungs is simply barbaric.”

According to Nolan, Sepulvado had been sent to New Orleans for surgery earlier in the week but was returned to the prison Friday night.

Louisiana officials decided to resume carrying out death sentences earlier this month after a 15 year pause driven by a lack of political interest and the inability to secure legal injection drugs. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry pushed to proceed with a new nitrogen gas execution protocol after the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature last year expanded death row execution methods to include electrocution and nitrogen gas.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement that “justice should have been delivered long ago” and Louisiana “failed to deliver it in his lifetime.”

Sepulvado’s execution was scheduled for March 17. Another man, Jessie Hoffman, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1996 and slated for execution on March 18. Hoffman initially challenged Louisiana’s lethal injection protocol in 2012 on the grounds that the method was cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge on Friday reopened that lawsuit after it was dismissed in 2022 because the state had no executions planned.

The country’s first execution using nitrogen gas was carried out last year in Alabama, which has now executed four people using the method.

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Creators: Trump's Death Penalty Order a Challenge to the 8th Amendment

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators
January 28, 2025

The first Trump administration carried out more executions than any president in at least a century. Shortly after being sworn in for a second time, President Donald Trump signed an order to expand the death penalty.

It should come as no surprise that a second Trump Department of Justice will seek capital punishment more often under his administration. That would be a clear break from the prior administration.

Former President Joe Biden declared a moratorium on executions when he took office. He campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty. Legislation proposing to end state-sponsored death failed to gain any traction in Congress during the Biden administration.

During his final days in office, Biden thwarted Trump's plan to resume executions by commuting the death sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row.

Biden knew what was coming. Under the first Trump administration, the federal government carried out 13 executions in a little more than six months following a 17-year pause.

The federal executions of 2020 included: the first federal execution in 57 years for a crime committed in a state that had abolished the death penalty; executions carried out against the wishes of the victims' families; and the first lame-duck executions in more than a century.

After losing his bid for reelection, Trump oversaw six executions during the presidential transition period, more than any other administration in the history of the United States. Prior to 2020, the federal government carried out only three executions in the modern era of the death penalty. This time around, Trump will have only three inmates to choose from on death row, and it is unlikely that any federal death sentence imposed during his tenure will be eligible for execution before he leaves office.

In the past, the U.S. attorney general had wide latitude in deciding whether to seek the death penalty in individual cases. Trump's order instructs the office to pursue federal jurisdiction and seek the death penalty, "regardless of other factors," for people who murder a law enforcement officer or who are in the country illegally and commit a capital crime.

More troubling is the portion of Trump's order that addresses the 37 men whose death sentences were commuted to life without parole. The order provides, "[T]he Attorney General shall take all lawful and appropriate action to ensure that these offenders [commuted persons] are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose."

Is Trump suggesting torture or something akin to it — like feeding inmates bread and water and locking them in tiny, unsanitary cells without interaction with others; no exercise; no contact with the outside world?

Miriam Gohara, a clinical professor of law at Yale Law School, told The Marshall Project the president's order raises legal concerns. "The punishment is being incarcerated. The punishment is not the condition of confinement. That's not legal," she said.

"The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment," Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told NPR. "There are limitations, both under the Constitution and international standards, that prohibit keeping people in torturous conditions."

"Are they going to intentionally put some sort of atmosphere in place that is intolerable?" added Gohara. "I can't imagine that is actually something that they could carry out. On the other hand, I don't want to underestimate them either."

Professor Gohara is right. Don't underestimate Trump. The U.S. Constitution may not be enough to constrain the new Department of Justice. On Day 1, Trump also declared that he wants to eliminate "birthright citizenship," a sacrosanct constitutional right adopted more than 150 years ago and delineated in the 14th Amendment.

How about the 22nd Amendment's limitation on presidential terms? With President Trump, everything is on the table.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on X @MatthewTMangino.

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Missouri executes man for rape and murder of 9-year-old girl

 The 23rd Execution of 2024

Missouri executed death row inmate Christopher Leroy Collings on December 2, 2024, 17 years after he confessed to raping and killing his friend's 9-year-old stepdaughter, reported the USA TODAY.

Collings, 49, was executed by lethal injection as the mother of his victim, 9-year-old Rowan Ford, watched him die, along with other witnesses in the death chamber at the Potosi Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri.

Collings, himself a father of two now-grown daughters, was convicted of killing Rowan on Nov. 3, 2007, in the tiny southwestern Missouri village of Stella. He confessed to police that he kidnapped a sleeping Rowan from her bedroom and took her to his trailer, where he raped and strangled her, according to court records.

Collings became the 23rd inmate executed in the U.S. this year and the fourth in Missouri, one of the most prolific death penalty states in the nation.

Here's what you need to know about Collings' execution.

In his last words, which he wrote out ahead of his execution, Collings said that "right or wrong, I accept this situation for what it is."

He also apologized.

"To anyone that I have hurt in this life I am sorry," he wrote. "I hope that you are able to get closure and move on."

He continued, saying that "regardless which side of this situation that you are on, you are in my prayers and I hope to see you in heaven one day."

It wasn't immediately clear Tuesday night whether he spoke those words aloud in the death chamber, but death row inmates are typically given time to deliver their last words out loud.

Collings' attorneys, at least one of whom witnessed the execution, said in a statement afterward that "Chris was taken too early from this Earth."

"We share Chris' desire that that his death will provide a measure of closure for the victim's family and that the people hurt by him will be able to carry on," the team said. "What occurred today, though, was an act of vengeance, but will not define Chris, nor will it be how we remember him."

On the night of Nov. 2, 2007, Collings was drinking heavily with two friends. One of the friends, David Spears, had a 9-year-old stepdaughter named Rowan Ford, whose mother was working her overnight shift at Walmart.

At some point that night, the men left Rowan home alone and started hanging out at Collings’ trailer. As the third friend drove Spears home on back roads to avoid getting pulled over, Collings later told police that he raced to Spears’ home and kidnapped a sleeping Rowan, put her in his truck and took her to his trailer, according to court records.

Once there, he raped her, police say he told them. After that, he said he intended to take her home but "freaked out" when she recognized him in the moonlight. That's when he strangled her, court records say.

Collings said he then dumped her body in a cave. She was found on Nov. 9, about a week after her disappearance triggered an Amber Alert and intensive search.

Spears also confessed to police, saying he raped Rowan and strangled her, while Collings denied that Spears was involved, the Missouri attorney general's office said in court documents. Spears ultimately was convicted of child endangerment and hindering prosecution, and got out of prison in 2015. USA TODAY could not find a phone number for Spears.

"I am so proud of the girl that she was turning out to be," Rowan's older sister, Ariane Macks, told USA TODAY this week. "A part of me died when my sister died. I did lose my ray of sunshine. ... She was very shy, but when she opened up, it's like the whole room lit up. Rowan, she was something very special."

The morning before Rowan's funeral, teachers and students at Rowan's school planted a pink dogwood tree in her honor and released purple balloons with notes from her classmates attached. A concrete angel was placed in the spot, as well as a marker reading April 11, 1998, for the day she was born and Nov. 9, 2007, as the day her body was found.

Macks, now 35 and living in Lineville, Alabama, said Collings deserved to be put to death for her sister's killing but that lethal injection falls short.

"I wanted him dead. I still do ... but they could have done something better than lethal injection because he's going out easy," she said. "I cannot even imagine the pain when (Rowan) was strangled. Chris being so tall and so big compared to my little sister, she didn't have a fighting chance."

Collings was a problem child who never formed an emotional attachment to anyone because he experienced severe neglect from his birth parents and several traumas after he was placed in foster care, including at least two rapes, his attorneys argued during his trial.

Collings and his five older siblings ended up in the system − and separated from each other − because their parents "were involved in a lot of crime, involved in a lot of substance abuse," his attorney at the time, Charles Moreland, told jurors, adding that "the evidence will also show that there are seeds of redemption within Christopher Collings."

Collings eventually became a father to two daughters but struggled with an alcohol and marijuana addiction, court records say. Macks recalled Collings' drinking problem, saying he became a different person while drunk, 

In its statement following the execution, Collings' legal team described him as standing at 6 feet, 8 inches tall, "but (he) was truly a gentle giant."

"His booming voice followed by a wide grin would greet you whenever he entered the room," they said. "Chris dismissed our offers for a handshake and would always pull you in for a warm hug."

They added that Collings "loved and cherished his children more than life itself."

"He constantly talked about his daughters and his regrets for not being a part of their lives when they were growing up," they said. "He worked for years to develop a relationship with his daughters and those efforts paid off in recent years. Chris spent hours talking with his daughters, and those moments provided him with hope and satisfaction knowing they had grown into successful young women."

In his arguments for Collings' life to be spared, Weis raised questions about his client's confession, saying it wasn't recorded and was given to then-Wheaton Police Chief Clinton Clark, who had four convictions for absence of office without leave and should never been allowed on the force. He emphasized Spears' own confession to the crime, saying it indicated even further doubt that Collings' alleged confession is the truth, as well as pointed out the extreme disparity in the two men's sentences.

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North Carolina spent $200 million on death penalty since last execution in 2006

North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006. In 6 of the last 10 years, North Carolina has not sentenced a single defendant to death. Despite the reluctance of jurors to impose death sentences and the hesitation of prosecutors and politicians to conduct executions, the death penalty has been a significant expense for state taxpayers, according to The Charlotte Observer.

According to a study conducted by Duke University researchers, death penalty prosecutions cost the state roughly $11 million per year. This means North Carolina has likely spent about $200 million on death penalty cases since its last execution in 2006. The additional costs of the death penalty begin at the defendant’s initial trial. Supreme Court precedent demands two separate trials for capital defendants. One to determine the defendant’s guilt, much like a traditional trial. The second trial is a resource-intensive presentation of the defendant’s life and the circumstances of the offense. For these sentencing trials, capital defendants are entitled to services from a wide range of mental health experts who extensively research the defendant’s life to find reasons why they may not deserve a death sentence.

After a defendant is sentenced to death, they go through decades of appeals to ensure that they had a fair trial. At each of the nine stages of appeals, the defendant is entitled to an attorney, and courts typically hire additional experts. If any of these appeals are successful, then the defendant will be entitled to a new, two-stage trial. If the defendant is sentenced to death again, they restart the lengthy appellate process from the beginning.

Although increased litigation costs are the largest reasons for the expense of the death penalty, they are not alone. North Carolina currently houses 136 defendants on death row in Raleigh, which costs roughly $85,000 per year to maintain.

Additionally, if North Carolina were to continue executions, the state would have to spend significant time and money to acquire pentobarbital, a drug legally required for executions in North Carolina. Pentobarbital is no longer sold by American pharmaceutical companies for the purposes of execution.

In 2020, Arizona recently spent $1.5 million to acquire pentobarbital from an undisclosed source. In the time since then, the drug has only become rarer and more expensive. Each of these expenses, from two-stage trials, to paying out countless experts, litigating a seemingly endless set of appeals and procuring expensive drugs, could be avoided by instead sentencing all capital defendants in North Carolina to life in prison and eliminating the death penalty.

While some death penalty proponents may argue for cutting corners to save money in our death penalty system, this is not a feasible option. North Carolina is bound by well-established Supreme Court precedent that grants capital defendants many expensive rights and processes. Further, the appeals system and experts involved in the death penalty serve an important purpose. Without these safeguards, it would be significantly more likely for an innocent defendant to be sentenced to death.

North Carolina has no reason to invest so much time and money into killing, when the state could instead work to protect citizens’ lives today. Our state would be a safer, more compassionate place if we reinvest the millions of dollars we spend on our death penalty system each year into victim’s funds, police training and resources, and mental health services.

The time to abolish the death penalty is now.

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Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip gets second chance before SCOTUS

The US Supreme Court considered whether the murder conviction of Richard Glossip, a death row inmate in Oklahoma, should be set aside due to a witness having given false testimony in court and state prosecutors having failed to disclose key information about the witness, according to Jurist.

This Glossip's second chance before the high court. In 2015, he and other Oklahoma inmates challenged the state’s lethal injection protocol, claiming the use of the drug midazolam violated their Constitutional rights under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” The US Supreme Court rejected that challenge.

In 1997, a hotel maintenance worker named Justin Sneed beat his employer, Barry Van Treese, to death. Sneed then claimed that Glossip, the hotel’s manager at the time, orchestrated the murder. According to various court documents, Sneed was told he could avoid the death penalty by testifying against Glossip at trial. Sneed ultimately testified that Glossip had paid him $10,000 to commit the murder. Glossip maintained his innocence, but was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1998 for the murder.

At issue in the present Supreme Court case is Sneed’s testimony. In particular, Sneed suffered from severe mental health struggles, for which he had been treated in the past. At trial, he denied ever having received psychiatric care — a claim that has since been disproved. In 2023, it was discovered that the prosecutors had not revealed Sneed had bipolar disorder and was prescribed lithium after he was arrested. Sneed had also reportedly told his attorney his testimony was a “mistake,” but this information was not revealed to the defense.

As asserted in an amicus brief submitted by the Innocence Project, a criminal justice reform advocacy group:

The State violated Richard Glossip’s right to due process… The State withheld material evidence that would have undercut the credibility of its key witness, Justin Sneed, by showing that he suffered from a serious psychiatric condition. And the State failed to correct Sneed’s false testimony … when he denied that he was under the care of a psychiatrist. Indeed, the State now agrees that Mr. Glossip is entitled to relief for this violation of his due process rights.

Previously, in June of 2022, 30 Reed Smith LLP lawyers published a report after investigating the legitimacy of Glossip’s conviction, raising concerns about the conviction, and in the following year, Glossip appealed for Oklahoma’s court to set aside his conviction. In April, Glossip sought to halt his execution planned for May 18, 2023 and his conviction returned to the district court. Attorney Gentner Drummond was investigating Glossip’s conviction in 2023 and backed Glossip’s appeal.

Drummond has stated that Glossip’s conviction depended on Sneed’s credibility. However, Justice Clarence Thomas implied faults in the investigation and said that the original prosecutors, Connie Smotherman and Gary Ackley, should have the opportunity to share their side.

Last month, the US Supreme Court upheld the execution of a Missouri man whose death sentence had been similarly controversial. Marcellus Williams was executed on Sep. 25 despite widespread concern surrounding the witness testimonies, prosecutorial practice, and evidence that led to his conviction.

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Alabama inmate wants executed by unproven nitrogen hypoxia

Lawyers for an inmate who is soon set to die in Alabama are arguing he should be executed by the state’s newly approved, but not yet tested, method instead of lethal injection after one controversial execution and two failed execution attempts on other inmates last year, reported AL.com.

James Barber, 64, is currently on death row at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. His execution day is approaching, but hasn’t been formally set to a single date: A new Alabama Supreme Court rule allows for an execution warrant to be issued for a “time frame” rather than a single day, allowing the governor to choose the timing of an execution. It’s a shift from how the process formerly worked, when the high court set a 24-hour period for executions. If an execution didn’t happen by midnight on that specified date, the execution had to be called off.

The warrant issued for Barber says Gov. Kay Ivey will set a time frame for Barber’s lethal injection “which shall not begin less than 30 days” from the May 3 order. It’s unclear how long the “time frame” will last, but the order means it must begin sometime after June 2.

The governor has not yet announced the time frame for Barber’s upcoming execution.

Barber was convicted in Madison County for the 2001 slaying of 75-year-old Dorothy Epps. Barber knew Epps because he had previously dated her daughter and he had done home repair work for her. Epps was beaten to death with Barber’s fists and a claw hammer in her Harvest home, according to court records. She suffered multiple skull fractures, head lacerations, brain bleeding, and rib fractures.

In a lawsuit filed by Barber’s attorneys in the U.S. Middle District of Alabama last week, Barber’s lawyers argue he should be executed by nitrogen hypoxia - suffocation on pure nitrogen - instead of lethal injection. The lawsuit calls the method a “readily available alternative.”

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PA Gov. Shapiro calls for end of death penalty

Gov. Josh Shapiro called on the state legislature to end the death penalty in Pennsylvania on Thursday, marking the first time a governor has formally asked the General Assembly to abolish the controversial sentence, reported The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Inside a West Philadelphia church, Shapiro also reiterated what he told reporters last month: That he would extend the execution moratorium put in place by former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf eight years ago.

“The Commonwealth shouldn’t be in the business of putting people to death, period,” Shapiro said. “At its core, for me, this is a fundamental statement of morality, of what’s right and wrong in my humble opinion. And I believe as governor that Pennsylvanians must be on the right side of this issue.”

Pennsylvania’s last execution was the 1999 lethal injection of Gary Heidnik, who raped and tortured six women he kept chained in the basement of his Franklinville home, then killed and dismembered two of them.

Shapiro, a Democrat and the former Attorney General, previously supported the death penalty “for some of the most heinous cases,” he said. But after recent conversations with advocacy groups and victims’ families who opposed the measure, he said, his stance has shifted.

After the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in 2018, Shapiro said he believed the killer “deserved to be put to death.”

But some of the victims’ families didn’t want that.

“I was truly moved by their courage and by their grace,” Shapiro said. “That has stayed with me, all of these conversations have stayed with me.”

He also recalled speaking with Lorraine “Ms. DeeDee” Haw, an organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration, last year, and how she told him she did not believe her brother’s killer should be put to death.

Thursday’s announcement is the “first step” in ending the death penalty in Pennsylvania, Shapiro and lawmakers said. No specific bill to end the death penalty has been introduced yet this session. Once legislation is introduced, it would need to pass the razor-thin Democratic majority in the House and the GOP-controlled Senate before it reaches Shapiro’s desk.

Until state law is changed, Shapiro said he would not sign any death warrants. There are 101 people on death row in Pennsylvania, according to state corrections data.

Pennsylvania once performed the third-highest number of executions in the country, and had the nation’s fourth-largest death row for two decades, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In recent years, though, its use has declined.

Since 1976, the Commonwealth has only carried out three executions, all under former Republican Gov. Tom Ridge.

Still, State House Republicans signaled Thursday that they were not yet ready to join Shapiro’s call for an end to the death penalty, saying “now is not the time to stop holding criminals to the highest levels of accountability for the most heinous crimes.

“Removing this measure of accountability and deterrence from prosecutorial discretion is at best tone deaf to the concerns of Pennsylvanians, and at worst, disrespectful to the victims of the most serious crimes in our society,” GOP House members said in a statement.

Shapiro’s announcement came just days after he declined to sign his first death warrant — for 27-year-old Rahmael Sal Holt, who shot and killed a police officer near Pittsburgh in 2017.

The legal history of the death penalty in Pennsylvania is complex. In 1972, the State Supreme Court ruled that the Commonwealth’s death penalty sentencing procedures were unconstitutional, and death row sentences were judicially reduced to life.

The legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1974, but three years later, that law was also found unconstitutional. In 1978, the legislature passed a revised version of the law allowing executions. But in 2015, Wolf placed a moratorium on executions, citing concerns about wrongful convictions and racial bias.

For those same reasons, Civil Rights groups have long called for an end to the death penalty. According to the ACLU, people of color have accounted for 43% of all executions since 1976, and represent 55% of those currently awaiting execution.

Racial bias was cited as a factor in what prosecutors now say was the wrongful conviction of Alexander McClay Williams, a Black Pennsylvania teenager who at 16 became the youngest person in Pennsylvania history to be put to death.

In 1931, an all-white jury convicted Williams in the stabbing death of a white woman. But a Delaware County judge overturned his conviction after prosecutors raised questions about his guilt, and he was posthumously vindicated last year.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has said he would never seek the death penalty, and has fiercely advocated for its abolition, though his spokesperson, Jane Roh, said the office has no blanket policy on the issue.

In 2019, Krasner’s office filed a brief with the Commonwealth Supreme Court, asking it to invoke its King Bench power to declare the death penalty unconstitutional. The Attorney General’s Office, under Shapiro, filed a brief opposing Krasner’s petition, Roh said, and ultimately, the high court effectively kicked the issue back to the General Assembly.

Several states have changed their capital punishment laws over the last 10 years, including Maryland and Virginia. New Jersey was the first state to abolish executions in 1965.

Twenty-seven states, including Pennsylvania, still have capital punishment on the books.

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Ohio killer who spent four decades on death row may be paroled

An Ohio prison inmate who has spent nearly four decades on death row in the murder of a convenience store clerk has been resentenced to a term that could allow his release on parole, reported Fox News.

Lucas County Judge Stacy Cook vacated Gregory Esparza's death sentence and imposed a new term of 30 years to life with credit for time served, The (Toledo) Blade reported. Two months ago, Cook had declared capital punishment unconstitutional in the case because prosecutors had failed to disclose evidence in his original trial.

"God is good for everyone," Esparza said to relatives Friday as he was escorted from the courtroom back to the county jail.

Esparza, now 60, was convicted in 1984 of aggravated murder and aggravated robbery with gun specifications in the February 1983 death of Melanie Gerschutz. The 38-year-old wife and mother was working the cash register at Island Variety in East Toledo when she was shot during a robbery of $110 from the register.

Esparza’s initial appeals were denied but a public records request in 1991 turned up a large number of police reports, interviews, and other documents never given to his defense attorneys. A federal appeals court in 1995 overturned the death sentence citing a "defective indictment," but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision. A 2016 appeal was denied on the grounds that federal courts had assessed the 1991 evidence, but a state appellate court later said no court had yet addressed the 1991 evidence in the context of capital punishment.

Cook wrote that although prosecutors may have been unaware of the 1991 evidence, the defense should have had it. More importantly, she said, some of the evidence indicated that Esparza didn't act alone and therefore "may not have been the principal offender," so the death penalty could not be imposed.

In Friday's hearing, Esparza said he had been just 21 and a "confused, lost soul" at the time of the crime but the rigors of life on death row for so long had helped him mature.

"God knows I am not a killer," he said. "Even when offered life without parole if I gave up my appeals, I chose execution."

Marsha Raymond, Gerschutz's daughter, a teenager at the time of her mother's slaying, told the court that the defendant "committed murder in cold blood."

"I am so grateful that I had such an amazing mom, but unfortunately because of his actions my family fell apart," she said. "My dad couldn’t speak about my mom, and he (Esparza) talks about a young child being abused? My younger brother was six years old. He has no memories of my mother."

Julia Esparza, Esparza’s sister, said the family was happy to see this day come.

"It has been very emotional," she told the newspaper. "We appreciate the justice system."

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California dismantles largest death row system in America

California has pushed ahead with controversial efforts to dismantle the largest death row system in America, reported NPR.

Under Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state is moving to make the transfer of condemned inmates permanent and mandatory after what the state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) calls a successful pilot program that voluntarily moved 101 inmates off death row into general population prisons across the state.

The effort is in keeping with Newsom's belief that the death penalty in America is unjust, is racially and class biased and has little connection to justice.

"That's a helluva thing: The prospect of your ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than it does your guilt or innocence," the Democratic governor said last year. "Think about that. We talk about justice, we preach justice. But as a nation, we don't practice it on death row."

After a 45-day public comment period and a public hearing in March, the state hopes to start moving all 671 death row inmates – 650 men and 21 women — into several other prisons across the state with high-security units.

Some prisoners will be able to get jobs or cellmates if they are mainstreamed into the general prison population.

The CDCR says the move allows the state "to phase out the practice of segregating people on death row based solely on their sentence." No inmates will be re-sentenced and no death row commutations offered, officials say.

Technically, the death penalty still exists in California. Prosecutors can still seek it. But no one has been put to death in the state in 17 years. And in 2019, Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions and he closed the death chamber at San Quentin, the decrepit and still heavily used 19th century prison overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Those who get prison jobs — as clerks, laundry or kitchen helpers – will see 70 percent of their pay go to victims' families, as required under Proposition 66. That 2016 voter-passed initiative amended California's Penal Code to require death-sentenced inmates to work and pay restitution.

Anti-capital punishment groups are elated that the state with the largest condemned population is moving forward with efforts to, in effect, join the 23 other states that have abolished their death rows.

"I'm thrilled. Gavin Newsom is doing a very smart thing and a very positive thing," says actor Mike Farrell, a long-time activist on the issue who chairs the group Death Penalty Focus. "It will continue to show people that the death penalty is neither necessary nor is it doing us any good."

Farrell calls capital punishment barbaric and biased against black, brown and poor people. While he wholly supports Newsom's move, he points out that many death row inmates face serious psychological hurdles, which will complicate the process of mainstreaming death row inmates.

"It's going to be very difficult. There are many people on death row with serious mental issues," he told NPR, noting many have been isolated for decades. "I think it's a very good move on (Newsom's) part. I just think that it has to be done extraordinarily carefully and very, very humanely."

Some murder victim families are opposed

But death penalty proponents and victims' rights advocates are frustrated and angry.

"To hear this news is devastating," says Sandra Friend. She described feeling victimized all over again.

Her 8-year-old son Michael Lyons was making his way home from school in Yuba City, Calif., in 1996 when he was abducted and sodomized by serial killer Robert Boyd Rhoades, who dumped the child's body in a riverbed.

"He (Rhoades) tortured Michael for 10 hours. He stabbed him 70 to 80 times," she says. "And he was 8 years old. Just the little boy full of life, full of dreams."

Rhoades was convicted of Lyons' murder in 1998 and later sentenced to die by lethal injection. But that never happened.

In part, California's death penalty reforms grew out of 2016's Prop. 66, which promised to speed up the time between a death sentence and an execution. The successful ballot measure also required condemned prisoners to work and pay restitution.

Now death penalty proponents accuse Newsom of exploiting a lesser-known section of Prop. 66 for his own ideological and political purposes.

"The governor has taken loopholes and nuances in the law and used them to give criminals – the worst criminals — a break," says Michael Rushford, president of the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "To start mainstreaming people like Tiequon Cox, who killed an entire family in Los Angeles after going to the wrong address to do a gang hit, is an abandonment of justice. Injecting politics into criminal justice and public safety is insane. It's unjust, unfair and it's stupid."

Other states have taken similar measures

In recent years governors in Pennsylvania and Oregon also have imposed moratoriums on the death penalty.

Oregon's Kate Brown extended her predecessor's moratorium. And in one of her last acts as governor last month, Brown commuted the sentences of all 17 people on death row to life in prison with no possibility of parole. She also ordered corrections officials to begin dismantling the state's execution chamber.

"I believe that there are many Oregonians that share my values that it is inequitable, immoral and doesn't make sense for the state to take a life, particularly when it is irreversible," she said, after announcing her decision shortly before the Christmas break.

Nationally, five-year averages of executions and new death sentences in America have hit decade lows, according to the recently published annual report by the non-partisan and non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.

Gallup polling shows a majority 55 percent of Americans are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers. But that's in stark contrast to the consistent 60 percent to 80 percent support recorded between 1976 and 2016, Gallup data show.

In California, Sandra Friend says it's outrageous that killers like Rhoades may "get rewarded," as she puts it, with expanded work options, even a cellmate.

"For him to be able to leave death row and go into a cushier prison, having maybe possibly a cellie, having a job, is terrifying because he is the worst of the worst. He is a monster," she says.

State officials underscore that inmate transfers and their housing will depend on the specific facts of each inmate.

"Their housing would depend on their individual case factors, and it's what the multidisciplinary teams will be evaluating," says CDCR spokeswoman Vicky Waters.

But Friend and other victims' families worry that simply allowing death row inmates to mingle with prisoners who will eventually get out is dangerous.

"Just to think about him (Rhoades) interacting with other inmates and having the opportunity to teach those skills and those methods of keeping, you know, under the radar is terrifying," Friend says. "He is a great threat to our society, our children."

The state hopes to permanently empty California's death row by this fall, a CDCR official says.

Friend vows to fight the effort. A public hearing on the issue is scheduled in Sacramento for March 8.

"I'm definitely going to make Michael's voice heard," she says, "because he's the one that is getting lost in all of this."

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