WASHINGTON — Fewer than 30 people were executed in the United States and under 50 new death sentences were imposed for the fifth straight year, part of a continuing decline in capital punishment that saw only a few states carry out executions, a new report issued Tuesday said. But even...
Judge Temporarily Stops 1st Federal Executions Since 2003
WASHINGTON — A judge has temporarily halted the first federal executions in 16 years as a lawsuit on how the government intends to carry them out continues. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan said in a Wednesday evening ruling that the public is not served by “short-circuiting” legitimate judicial process....
Justice Dept. Will Execute Inmates for First Time Since 2003
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Thursday that it will carry out executions of federal death row inmates for the first time since 2003. Five inmates who have been sentenced to death are scheduled to be executed starting in December. In 2014, following a botched state execution in Oklahoma, then-President Barack Obama directed the department to...
Walters: Newsom Does It Again With Death Row Reprieve
Gavin Newsom is fond of making grandiloquent, headline-grabbing gestures couched in moralistic terms. His tendency first surfaced in 2004 when, as the newly elected mayor of San Francisco, he directed officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in defiance of a state law passed by California voters just a...
Newsom Now Says He May Commute Death Sentences
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom not only put a moratorium on executions in California on Wednesday, he said he also may commute death sentences and is pushing to repeal capital punishment. Newsom signed an executive order granting reprieves to all 737 condemned inmates on the nation's largest death row. That means no...