Category: Death penalty

Richard Glossip case: latest


US Supreme Court rules that prosecutors violated ethical responsibilities

February 2025

The case of Richard Glossip in Oklahoma raises a number of interesting issues concerning the death penalty in the USA and in this case, the state of Oklahoma. In a 5-3 decision in Glossip v. Oklahoma issued on 25 February, the Supreme Court judges ruled that the prosecutors had ‘violated their duty to correct false testimony’. The prosecutors had also ‘suppressed material evidence concerning their star witness, Justin Sneed’ who actually committed the murder.

The case involved the murder in 1997 of Barry van Treese the owner of a motel. Sneed confessed to the killing and agreed a plea bargain claiming that Glossip had instructed him to carry out the murder. This saved him from execution. There are a number of factors which has made this a case attracting international attention.

There was very little corroboration evidence apart from the testimony of Sneed. Sneed’s mental state was not revealed to the defence (defense) team, nor was his untrustworthiness or that he had lied to the police. Glossip’s legal team has discovered that Sneed had discussed recanting his testimony before the original trial and since. This had not been revealed to them. Another not unusual factor is the doubtful quality of his defence counsel.

There is not doubt that Glossip has suffered much in the 27 years. He has had no less than nine execution dates and has eaten three ‘last meals’.

It is being said that this case will not have wider effects because so many elements are unusual. But it does highlight the problem of the death penalty. Had any one of the nine actually taken place, there would have been no chance of an appeal. If the criminal system has people willing to withhold evidence, then any chance of a fair trial is unlikely. It is also unwise to convict someone of the ultimate legal penalty without certainty which must mean at the very least, corroborative and trustworthy evidence. A defendant must also have first class attorneys to defend him. The testimony of an unreliable witness should be treated with great caution.

A new trial has been ordered.

Sources:

World Campaign Against the Death Penalty; BBC, The Hill.

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Harmful effects of the death penalty


The effects on those responsible for carrying out executions is often overlooked

February 2025

In discussions about executions the focus is, naturally enough, on the individual who is about to be put to death. We forget that there are many prison officers who are closely involved with those on death row, sometimes for many years, even decades. This post draws on material produced by the Death Penalty Information Center in the US for which we are grateful. The Salisbury group is focusing on the state of Oklahoma. We are grateful to group member Lesley for the work in compiling this.

Executions can cause prison staff to suf­fer psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress sim­i­lar to what vet­er­ans expe­ri­ence

after war. A 2022 NPR inves­ti­ga­tion found that cor­rec­tions offi­cers faced symp­toms such as insom­nia, night­mares, pan­ic attacks, sui­ci­dal thoughts, per­son­al­i­ty changes, and sub­stance abuse – all hall­marks or comor­bidi­ties of post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der. Of the 16 peo­ple NPR inter­viewed who par­tic­i­pat­ed in exe­cu­tions, none sup­port­ed the death penal­ty in their wake. Psychologists use the term ​“moral injury” to describe how com­mit­ting an act that con­tra­dicts one’s deeply held beliefs, such as caus­ing anoth­er person’s death, cre­ates a severe psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion. Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell coined the term ​“executioner stress” to describe the spe­cif­ic men­tal impact of car­ry­ing out the death penalty. 

The stress may also extend to guards who do not par­tic­i­pate in the exe­cu­tion itself, but devel­op close rela­tion­ships with death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers over the course of decades work­ing on death row. Some cor­rec­tions offi­cers have remarked that they spend more time with the peo­ple on death row than their own fam­i­lies. They may come to see the con­demned pris­on­ers as friends, or wit­ness the pris­on­ers’ men­tal or phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. In stud­ies, offi­cers have expressed con­cerns about the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty, not­ing that they had worked with many peo­ple with life sen­tences who com­mit­ted equiv­a­lent or worse crimes than the peo­ple the offi­cers helped put to death. 

“There is a part of the war­den that dies with his pris­on­er,”

The psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of per­form­ing exe­cu­tions is not a new phe­nom­e­non. Donald Cabana and Jerry Givens both con­duct­ed exe­cu­tions in the begin­ning of the mod­ern era, in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s, and went on to pub­licly oppose the death penal­ty. ​“There is a part of the war­den that dies with his pris­on­er,” Mr. Cabana often said.

Journalist Jennifer Gonnerman researched New York’s last four exe­cu­tion­ers, who over­saw the use of the elec­tric chair from 1913 through 1963, a peri­od dur­ing which hun­dreds of peo­ple were put to death. Several of the men expe­ri­enced med­ical issues around the time of exe­cu­tions, such as migraines or faint­ing spells. One, Robert Elliot, lat­er became a promi­nent death penal­ty abo­li­tion­ist. Two of the men, John Hulbert and Dow Hover, died by suicide. 

Yet prison staff have long faced a cul­ture of silence about exe­cu­tion-relat­ed trau­ma. ​“We don’t talk about it,” said Justin Jones, direc­tor of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections from 2005 to 2013, who joined the effort to increase the time between exe­cu­tions (see Oklahoma below.)  ​“Correctional offi­cers are pub­lic ser­vants on the low­est salaries in state gov­ern­ment, and they get home at the end of the day and just absorb it.” NPR’s inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that some exe­cu­tion team mem­bers had nev­er even told their fam­i­lies they par­tic­i­pat­ed. ​“We all knew to keep it silent,” said Catarino Escobar, who worked on the exe­cu­tion squad in Nevada. Mr. Escobar was strapped to the gur­ney when he played the pris­on­er dur­ing a prac­tice ses­sion, and he grew pan­icked and became con­vinced he was going to die. NPR found that only one of the offi­cers they inter­viewed had ever received men­tal health care relat­ed to their posi­tion, and even when care was offered, it was ​“over­whelm­ing­ly option­al” and ​“many of them avoid­ed ask­ing for it so as not to seem weak.” 

Oklahoma

In this con­text, uni­fied efforts by cor­rec­tions staff to address the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of exe­cu­tions rep­re­sented a mile­stone. In March 2024 a group of nine for­mer Oklahoma cor­rec­tions offi­cials wrote a let­ter to Attorney General Gentner Drummond and, based on the detri­men­tal impact of the job and the lack of men­tal health sup­port, asked for an increase from a time of 60 to 90 days between executions. They not­ed that exe­cu­tion team mem­bers expe­ri­ence an increased risk of PTSD, sui­cide, and sub­stance abuse, and the gruelling prepa­ra­tion sched­ule puts staff mem­bers through­out the prison on edge due to ​“near-con­stant mock exe­cu­tions being con­duct­ed with­in earshot of pris­on­ers’ cells, staff offices, and vis­it­ing rooms.” With few state resources at their dis­pos­al, some employ­ees even resort­ed to talk­ing with defence men­tal health experts vis­it­ing the prison ​“about the dis­tress they are expe­ri­enc­ing due to the non­stop executions.” 

This com­pressed exe­cu­tion sched­ule also increas­es the risk of some­thing going wrong dur­ing the exe­cu­tion process because the stress cre­at­ed by each exe­cu­tion com­pounds the dif­fi­cul­ty of an already com­plex pro­ce­dure. If even a rou­tine exe­cu­tion can inflict last­ing harm on cor­rec­tions staff, the trau­mat­ic impact of a botched exe­cu­tion is expo­nen­tial­ly worse. Oklahoma has expe­ri­enced this harm on mul­ti­ple occa­sions and should not need­less­ly place its hard­work­ing cor­rec­tion­al staff at risk of anoth­er such mistake.

“Prison staff need to ‘man up'” Judge says

Judge Gary Lumpkin dismissed these concerns, telling officials that prison staff needed ‘to suck it up’ and ‘man up’.  Prison staff were report­ed­ly angered by Judge Lumpkin’s com­ments that they need­ed to ​“man up” and the sug­ges­tion that their con­cerns were not valid. ​“Anybody that thinks that exe­cut­ing some­body is no prob­lem has not been a part of the process,” said Justin ​“JJ” Humphrey, the state assem­bly chair of a crim­i­nal jus­tice and cor­rec­tions com­mit­tee and 20-year vet­er­an of the cor­rec­tions depart­ment. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals even­tu­al­ly grant­ed the exten­sion request in May. 

(Source: Death Penalty Information Centre – December 2024). Image: USA Today.

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February minutes and newsletter


February 2025

We have pleasure in attaching the minutes and newsletter of our last meeting thanks to group member Lesley for the work in preparing them. We say ‘newsletter’ because they are more than just minutes of the meeting as they contain reports on the refugee and immigration system, a report on the death penalty and a list of future activities.

February minutes (Word)Download

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Death penalty report


February 2025

Here is the death penalty report for mid January to mid February thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling it. It is quite long! That is partly due to a lot of activity in America where executions are proceeding apace and the various executive orders being issued by President Trump.

Another event is the call for the return of the death penalty in the UK particularly by the Reform party. This occurs after a particular murder or murders in this case the dreadful murders of three little girls in Southport last year. Amnesty’s position is that it is never right to inflict a death sentence on someone, it does not act as a deterrent and mistakes cannot be put right if there is a wrongful conviction.

Report (Word)Download

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Death penalty report


Report for mid December to mid January 2025

January 2025

We are pleased to attach the latest death penalty report thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling this. Iran features in this report with the suspension of its draconian legislation on women who do not dress appropriately. As ever, we note that China is believed to be the world’s largest executioner of its citizens but details are a state secret.

Dec-Jan REPORT (Word)Download

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Death penalty: good news


President Biden commutes 37 out of the 40 prisoners on death row

December 2024

It is gratifying to be able to report some good news concerning the death penalty particularly at this time of year. Yesterday, 22 December, President Biden commuted 37 death sentences turning the sentences into life without the possibility of parole. This, which will be one of his last acts of his presidency, was widely welcomed in the States and elsewhere.

Biden has come some way from his time as a Senator when he championed a bill to widen the scope of the death penalty to a further 60 new offences. It is ironic that some of those who are having their sentences commuted – with a preponderance of Black people – were condemned as a result of his bill.

Part of the reason is the worry about when President-elect Trump takes office in a month or so. Trump put more people to death than the previous ten presidents combined. He is committed to the penalty and with a compliant Supreme Court, there will be little to stop him. Biden said: “In all conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted”.

These are Federal death penalty cases and it does not affect state actions.

Amnesty is opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances. The local group produces a monthly report on its use around the world.

Sources: The White House; BBC; NBC; ACLU; USA Today

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Death penalty rage in US


A spate of executions in US prompts rage and frustration

December 2024

The authoritative Death Penalty Information Center in the US has published its 2024 report on executions in the USA. The num­ber of new death sen­tences in 2024 increased from 2023, with 26. The num­ber of peo­ple on death row across the United States has con­tin­ued to decline from a peak pop­u­la­tion in the year 2000. Support for the penalty in the US has continued to decline.

Three of the cases it highlights are those which the Salisbury group has campaigned on: Marcellus Williams, Robert Roberson and Richard Glossip.

It has mainly been the Southern states that stick to this penalty. Indeed, it is just four states that conducted 76% of executions: Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri. Concern has been expressed that too many people are executed who have a credible defence of innocence. Many of those who await execution or who were executed demonstrate classic vulnerabilities, including intellectual disability or brain damage, serious mental illness, or a history of severe childhood trauma or abuse.

The US joins a motley crew of countries which execute significant numbers of its citizens. China leads the way with large numbers executed but the numbers are a state secret. Others include North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Why should it be banned? There are five good reasons:

  • It is not a deterrent. If it was, one would expect to see a fall in violent crime in the states using the penalty. There is no such correlation.
  • It is irreversible. Mistakes cannot be put right. There is no comeback from an execution. We can quote Andy Malkinson who was released after 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Had he been executed …
  • It is often used as a political tool especially in countries such as Iran, Saudi and China. There are elements of this in the Southern states of the US with disproportionate numbers of Black people on death row.
  • It is often used after unfair justice. Readers of Clive Stafford-Smith’s work, for example, Injustice, will know that the process of criminal trials in the US is far from perfect or fair. There is no obligation on police to produce evidence that proves a plaintiff’s innocence. Plea bargains are frequently used to enable one participant to escape justice at the expense of another. Juries are often biased.
  • It is discriminatory with a preponderance of black people or those with mental impairment who find themselves on death row.

In Oklahoma, Richard Glossip (pictured) is one of the cases the group has pursued which illustrates several of the

above points. Doubts around the death sentence of Glossip also provoked intense soul-searching. Glossip was convicted of the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese, the owner of a motel in Oklahoma City which Glossip managed.

He was convicted based on the testimony of a co-worker who later admitted he was the actual murderer. It was also recently revealed that prosecutors destroyed evidence before trial that could have cleared Glossip.

The Report notes that the Supreme Court has largely abandoned its role of critical appraisal of cases which come before it. When Donald Trump assumes the role of President a month from now, he is committed to accelerating the pace of Federal executions. It is likely that a number of death row inmates will die who have credible doubts about their convictions.

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Death penalty report


December 2024

We are pleased to attach our latest death penalty report covering the period mid November to mid December 2024 with thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling this. As ever we must note that China is believed to execute more of its citizens than the rest of the world combined but the details are a state secret. This month saw the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria. People were able to gain access to the prisons where thousands were tortured and executed.

Report mid November to Mid December (Word)Download

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North Korea


North Korea admits to using the death penalty

November 2024

North Korea is back in the news recently having sent thousands of troops to aid the Russians in their invasion of Ukraine. They are also supplying munitions in return for, it is thought, technological help from Russia. They are also engaged in using the death penalty and we are reproducing a post from Amnesty on this.

North Korea has admitted carrying out public executions in a rare admission about its treatment of prisoners, ironically made during an effort to defend and justify its human rights record. Rights organisations have long accused Pyongyang of shooting dead convicts in public, and defectors from the isolated country have given gruesome accounts of North Korean executioners tormenting condemned prisoners, burning and mutilating them after death and forcing others to look at their corpses.

On one occasion, an estimated crowd of 25,000 in the northern city of Hyesan was forced to watch as nine people were executed by firing squad for having slaughtered government-owned cattle and distributing the meat to businesses.
“I kept thinking of the horrific scene of yesterday’s shooting, so I couldn’t sleep all night and trembled with fear,” one resident said.

North Korea defended its controversial law dictating harsh penalties for consuming foreign media on Thursday, while admitting that it carries out public executions and imprisons perpetrators of “anti-state” crimes. The DPRK government made the rare acknowledgement during the U.N.’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the country in Geneva, which examines the human rights record of member states every four to five years.

At a session on 14 November, a North Korea official offered striking admissions of human rights abuses in the country, even as he sought to justify them under state policies.
On the death penalty, Park said the DPRK executes individuals “who committed extremely serious crimes,” including publicly. 

Until now, North Korea has denied staging public executions and has sought to promote the idea that there is a legal framework with safeguards for treatment of prisoners.

Public executions are considered to be a way to keep the population in line. According to witness testimonies from the DPRK, public executions for watching or distributing South Korean films and drug smuggling have increased in recent years, as well sentences for “crimes against the regime”.

Public executions of young North Koreans are on the rise, Seoul says, as Pyongyang seeks to stamp out South Korea’s cultural influence. One North Korean defector to the South recounted witnessing the public execution of a 22-year-old in South Hwanghae province in 2022. The young man’s crimes were listening to 70 South Korean songs and watching and sharing three South Korean films.

The death penalty has always been available in North Korea’s legal system but a commentary on the North Korean Criminal Law 3, published by the North Korean authorities in 1957, suggests that the death penalty will eventually be abolished in North Korea and is presently utilised as a last resort.

The revised Criminal Code of 1987 mentions the death penalty as one of two kinds of “basic penalties” to be imposed on criminal offenders. The minimum age for imposition was lowered from 18 to 17 and the prohibition against the lowering of human dignity was scrapped. Under the 1987 Criminal Code, the death penalty is mandatory for activities “in collusion with imperialists” aimed at “suppressing the national-liberation struggle” and the revolutionary struggle for reunification and independence” or for “acts of betraying the Nation to imperialists”
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Urgent action: Oklahoma


We attach an urgent action concerning the death penalty in Oklahoma

November 2024

DEATH PENALTY ACTION FOR NOVEMBER, 2024

This  action is part of our continuing campaign calling on the Governor of Oklahoma to issue a moratorium on all executions, and ultimately to move towards the permanent abolition of the death penalty in the state.  Letters (preferably) or emails should be sent to Governor Stitt, focusing in particular on the history of racial discrimination within the State and how this has impacted on Oklahoma’s application of the death penalty.

Contact details:

The Honorable J Kevin Stitt

Governor of the State of Oklahoma

Oklahoma State Capitol

2300 N. Lincoln Blvd; Suite212

Oklahoma City

OK 73105

USA.

Emails can be tried at:   https://oklahoma.gov/governor/contact/general-information/contact-the-governor.html which gives access to a form.

Please take this action before the end of November.

Racial Discrimination/Bias in the Application of the Death Penalty in the State of Oklahoma

In 2017 the Death Penalty Review Commission concluded the system in Oklahoma was ‘broken’ and unanimously recommended a moratorium on executions ‘until significant reforms were accomplished’.  They also questioned ‘whether the death penalty could be administered in a way that ensured no innocent person was put to death.  They made 47 recommendations but it is understood – over 6 years later – none have been implemented.

In 2022 the report Deeply Rooted: How Racial History informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty’ by Dr Crutcher, Founder and Executive Director of the Terence Crutcher Foundation, was issued – and updated in  September 2024.

The report places Oklahoma’s death penalty in its historical context of lynchings and mass violence against Black Oklahomans and the forced migration of Native Americans. It documents the historical role that race has played in the State’s death penalty and details the pervasive impact that racial discrimination continues to have in the administration of capital punishment.

The report ties Oklahoma’s use of the death penalty to its troubled history of racial violence and segregation. It observed that Oklahoma was at an inflection point in its administration of the death penalty and argued that, if the State was to establish a fair and humane system of justice, it was crucial to acknowledge and redress the effects of the Jim Crow laws and racial violence that persist into the present day.

Racial discrimination, especially the race of the victim, continues to infect all aspects of the death penalty in Oklahoma.  A study of homicides in the state between 1990 and 2012 found that the odds a person charged with killing a white female victim would be sentenced to death were 10 times greater than if the victim was a minority male. Of the 25 executions scheduled between August 2022 and December 2024, 68% involve white victims. Data throughout the report suggest that valuing white victims more than others has resulted in disproportionate punishment for Black defendants who murder white people.

An examination of the age and race of the men scheduled for execution reflects the bias that Black youth are perceived as older and less innocent than white youth. Seven of the 10 Black men set for execution were 25 years old or younger at the time of the crime. By contrast, only one of the 13 white men set for execution was 25 or younger at the time of his crime. Three of the Black men were 20 or younger and one of them, Alfred Mitchell, was only two weeks past his 18th birthday.

Of the 142 people in the U.S. who have been removed from death row because of intellectual disability (following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that their executions are barred), the majority (83%) have been people of colour. This suggests that people of colour, especially Black people, with intellectual disability are at a greater risk of being subjected to capital punishment. Oklahoma has limited the ability for people on death row to seek relief based on intellectual disability. As the report notes, Michael Smith, a Black man, had a documented, lifelong intellectual disability[i]. Despite his medical diagnosis, Oklahoma denied Mr. Smith a hearing on his intellectual disability.

At least five cases of those scheduled for execution in Oklahoma may have involved official misconduct, including Clarence Goode, a Black and Muscogee man set to be executed on August 8, 2024, (but see below) who was convicted after the testimony of a detective who later served time in federal prison for misconduct in other cases. Nationwide, nearly 80% of wrongful capital convictions of Black people involve official misconduct by police, prosecutors, or other government officials.

Native American Sovereignty

The report states that Oklahoma has a history of defying U.S. Supreme Court decisions that would provide some measure of racial justice. For example, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals refused to apply McGirt v. Oklahoma (holding that the State lacked jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by or against Native American people on tribal lands)

In 2020 the US Supreme Court recognised that Oklahoma has continually prosecuted criminal cases in violation of long-standing treaties with Native American tribes.  At least 3 Native Americans have been executed in violation of tribal sovereignty, and at least 4 people remain on death row despite these violations.

Thirty-seven Native American men and women have been sentenced to death in Oklahoma, more than in any other state. Two people currently scheduled for execution –  Clarence Goode, Jr[ii]  and Alfred Mitchell[iii] are Native American.

Sources:  Death Penalty Information Centre

[i] my update: executed on 4th April 2024 – despite a 4 to 1 recommendation for clemency from the Pardon and Parole Board

[ii] my update: execution stayed 8th August 2024 pending new date

[iii] my Update: execution stayed 3rd October 2024 pending new date

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