At a town hall event in Columbus, Ohio, tonight, Hillary Clinton took a question from Ricky Jackson, who was exonerated in May after 39 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Jackson asked Clinton whether she would abolish the death penalty; she said that she would not.

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted a stay of execution while a lower court considers the appeal of a condemned Missouri man convicted of beating three people to death with a claw hammer, reports the Associated Press.

The mostly Republican Legislature of the mostly Republican state of Nebraska voted Wednesday to ban capital punishment by a margin that’s likely to withstand the governor’s veto.

On Tuesday night, Georgia executed Warren Lee Hill—an inmate with an IQ of 70—who was unable to prove he had a mental disability under Georgia's strict legal standard.

The persistence of capital punishment in some American states is cause for disgust. There is some good news, though: the death penalty is on the decline. These year end numbers prove it.

A federal judge in Southern California ruled Wednesday that the state's death penalty is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney wrote that the "dysfunctional administration of California's death penalty system" has led to years-long delays for executions. According to the Los Angeles Times, 900 people have been given the death penalty in California since 1978—only 13 have been executed.

We periodically publish letters from inmates on death row. Today, we bring you a message from convicted murderer Pete Russell, who has been on death row in Texas for the past 11 years.

Tennessee has a solution to the nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs: It's bringing back the electric chair.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans polled by NBC News said they'd favor a return to death by gas, electric chair, firing squad or hanging if lethal injection was found impractical. What's your preference? Personally, I'd like to have seen polling numbers for garroting and breaking on the wheel.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences uses statistical techniques to estimate that one in every 25 death row inmates in America would be exonerated, given enough time and attention.

In a month that has seen the exoneration of both the world's and our nation's longest-serving death row inmates, it is worth asking: where the hell does all the support for the death penalty come from? The answer may not surprise you.

Two weeks ago, Texas death row inmate Ray Jasper wrote us a letter. Tomorrow, barring any last minute miracles, Ray Jasper will die.

Americans need jobs! Are any Americans willing to relocate to strangle criminals until they stop breathing? If so, contact these guys:

In 2004, the state of Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for the crime of setting fire to his own house, killing his three children. Today, evidence is stronger than ever that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice.

The governor of Washington has suspended the death penalty in his state, citing "too many flaws in this system."

"A condemned Ohio inmate appeared to gasp several times and took more than 15 minutes to die Thursday as he was executed with a combination of drugs never before tried in the U.S." Dennis McGuire's attorney called the execution "a failed, agonizing experiment by the state of Ohio."

Lost Words in the Chamber is a blog that runs the revealing, desperate, and sometimes beautiful last words of prisoners being executed in the United States. [via NYT]

The State of Mississippi has denied an inmate on death row the opportunity to be exonerated through DNA testing, a procedure that is almost always followed nowadays for prisoners facing capital punishment.

After 30 years of "Free Mumia" signs, t-shirts and bumper stickers being omnipresent at every single even vaguely left-leaning rally, the state of Pennsylvania has announced that it will no longer seek the death penalty against the journalist and former Black Panther, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.

Calling the death penalty "as practiced... unfair and unjust," Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced today that he won't allow any executions his term in office, and will soon ask the legislature to consider reforms—if not abolishment.