On this day in 1792, the guillotine reportedly was first used in France to execute a highwayman, Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier. At the time, despite its subsequent notoriety as a means of…
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy provided the crucial swing vote yesterday in three Supreme Court cases striking down the death sentences of Texas inmates, a New York…
On this day in 1800, President John Adams approved a then-hefty $5,000 appropriation to establish the Library of Congress, 20 percent of which went for law books (mainly on British…
On Wednesday, the lawyer for a Texas death-row inmate will argue before the U.S. Supreme Court that his client should not be executed because he cannot understand the link between…
When she was called for jury duty, Theresa A. Severance was pleased. A criminologist and college professor, she looked forward to research insights from her experience serving on the front…
The California Supreme Court has ruled that courts may weigh mental deficiencies in just one area when deciding whether to impose the death sentence on a defendant with a normal IQ.
The Innocence Project, a New York-based group that uses DNA to expose wrongful convictions, is expected to win the release of a 200th inmate this week.
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