The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday granted a stay of execution for a woman who was set to be judicially killed on Wednesday for the 2007 death of one of her 14 children, ordering a lower court to review new evidence in the case. Lawyers for Mexican-American Melissa Lucio, 52, say new evidence…

HOUSTON—Texas’ oldest death row inmate faces execution Thursday for killing a Houston police officer nearly 32 years ago during a traffic stop. Carl Wayne Buntion, 78, was sentenced to death for the June 1990 fatal shooting of Houston police officer James Irby, a nearly 20-year member of the force. Buntion had been on parole for…

SANTA CLARA, Calif.—Thirty years ago, a Los Angeles man was sentenced to death for killing a father of three. Now the district attorney is planning to drop the murderer’s death sentence. In January 1992, 21-year-old Scott Forrest Collins was sentenced to death for robbing and shooting 41-year-old Fred Rose. However, in February this year, the…

A death row inmate was put to death late Thursday after the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling, clearing the way for the execution. Death row inmate Matthew Reeves, 43, was pronounced dead at 9:24 p.m. CST after being administered a lethal injection, state Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. The nation’s high…

OKLAHOMA CITY—A state appeals court on Wednesday rejected the appeal of an Oklahoma death row inmate who was sentenced to die for killing a 16-year-old girl in 2012. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied Miles Bench’s motion for an evidentiary hearing and to stay proceedings in his death penalty appeal. Bench, 30, was convicted…

Commentary Bowing to intense political pressure, Oklahoma’s Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of one of the nation’s reddest states, commuted on Thursday the death sentence of convicted murderer Julius Jones. Stitt’s commutation of Jones, who was convicted for a first-degree carjacking murder in one of the most reliably pro-death penalty states, is but the latest…

House Democrats are hoping to vote on President Joe Biden’s larger social spending plan next week. But is that too optimistic? And a nonpartisan group says it’ll cost much more than the White House’s estimate. U.S. Navy SEALs are suing the Biden administration. It’s over claims they are being denied religious exemptions to the vaccine….

JACKSON, Miss.—A Mississippi judge will decide whether a death row inmate who says he wants to be executed is mentally competent to waive all his appeals. The state Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the examination in the case of David Cox. Cox wrote to Mississippi Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr. in August saying he wanted…

A federal judge in Oklahoma on Monday allowed the state to proceed with the scheduled lethal injection executions of five death row inmates. The five inmates include Julius Jones, who was convicted of murdering an insurance executive in his parents’ driveway after the victim returned from a back-to-school shopping trip with his daughters. His case…

Commentary A medium-rare rib-eye steak, a baked potato with butter and sour cream, an iceberg lettuce salad, garlic bread, and lemon meringue pie for dessert. That was the last meal ordered up by serial killer Oscar Bolin right before the state of Florida executed him. It is customary in most states for death row inmates…