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A notorious killer on San Quentin’s death row died after being found unconscious in his cell early Thursday, prison officials said. The Marin County coroner will now work to determine how 55-year-old Gilbert Rubio died after correctional officers found him unresponsive during a security check just after 6 a.m. Rubio was sentenced to die on Sept. 20, 2000 for the 1998 murder and robbery of high school vice principal George “Skipper” Blackwell in his Long Beach home.

As summer approaches in Louisiana, prison officials insist that ice, fans and cold showers are enough to protect death-row inmates from dangerous heat and humidity. […] U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson questioned Friday why prison officials won’t spend roughly $1 million to install the air conditioning, since the state has already spent much more money fighting this issue in court. The judge already ruled it unconstitutional to keep inmates where the heat index exceeds 88 degrees. …

California has a new death row; it's called Virginia. Anti-death penalty advocates, federal judges and defense attorneys have been so successful at blocking capital punishment in California that a San Quentin death row inmate has more to fear from being extradited for a capital murder to another state than seeing his sentence carried out here. There has been no execution in California since a federal judge effectively halted the practice in 2006. Take serial killer Alfredo Prieto. In 2005, Prieto was on San Quentin's death row for the 1990 rape and murder of 15-year-old Yvette Woodruff in Riverside County, when...

A woman who was sentenced to death after she was wrongly convicted of killing her abusive husband has finally been set free after 15 years of incarceration, after the court re-examined her case and determined that there were some serious errors made during her trial. Now 57, Michelle Byrom has spent more than a quarter of her life behind bars in Mississippi, awaiting her death for a crime she didn't commit. Even after her son confessed to murdering the man who abused him and his mother mercilessly, she continued to sit on death row. Finally free again, Michelle recently spoke...

Death row inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary have lost their latest legal battle for relief from triple-digit temperatures inside their cells at Angola. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling Wednesday (July 8) concluding that the sweltering conditions on death row do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Three death row inmates originally filed the lawsuit against the state in 2013, saying the conditions were unconstitutional. The suit alleged that heat indices, or measurements of how hot it feels, on death row had reached 172 degrees last year and 195 degrees in 2011."I feel like I'm on...

The vast majority of those cases took place at the state level. Federal prisoners like Tsarnaev are even less likely to be executed. Between 1988, when Congress reinstated the death penalty for federal cases, and 2013, 71 federal defendants were sentenced to death; only three were executed, compared with 10 who had their sentences or convictions overturned on appeal. (One inmate died on death row, and another had his sentence commuted to life by President Bill Clinton in 2001.) No federal execution has taken place since 2003. Of those still awaiting execution, the typical inmate has already spent a decade...

Anthony Ray Hinton was one of Alabama’s longest-serving death row inmates, having spent more than half his life incarcerated. Now, after 30 years of saying he is innocent in the murder of two men, the 58-year-old Hinton walked out of an Alabama jail on Friday, finally a free man.

With no executions in nearly a decade and newly condemned men arriving each month, the nation's largest death row has run out of room.

A nonprofit advocacy group that supports former death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal reported that he had been hospitalized Monday afternoon. Prison Radio, which distributes recordings made by Abu-Jamal in prison, said the 60-year-old had been transported from the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy in Schuylkill County at 1 p.m. to the intensive care unit at Schuylkill Medical Center.

It is a macabre choice to make - and almost unique to some inmates on Utah's death row: would you be injected with toxic chemicals, or shot in the heart? But, amid cries of outrage against the southwestern state bringing death by firing quad back into law, almost half of those due to die that way have picked the punishment themselves. Ron Lafferty, who slit the throats of his sister-in-law and her baby daughter in 1984, is one of three who has opted to die by the bullet. Two others in Utah's eight-strong death row have made the same choice,...

The Scientist Who Wanted To Bring A Death Row Inmate Back From The Dead Dr. Robert E. Cornish is probably best known for his 1930s revivification experiments with dogs, in which he claimed to bring dogs back from clinical death. He wanted to try a similar procedure on humans — and when a death row inmate volunteered, Cornish petitioned the state of California to let him play re-animator. Cornish's dog experiments would make most dog lovers cringe. Cornish would suffocate the dogs until they were clinically dead, and then he would place the bodies on a teeter board, rocking the...

The execution of the only woman on Georgia's death row has been postponed at the last minute for a second time in less than a week - because the drug used in the lethal injection she was scheduled to receive was 'cloudy'. Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, was due to be given an injection of pentobarbital at a prison in Jackson at 7pm on Monday in retribution for plotting the murder of her husband in 1997. But after officials observed the drug to be used in the execution had a 'cloudy' appearance, they postponed her death until a future, unspecified date...

Attorney General Eric Holder called Tuesday for a national moratorium on the death penalty until the Supreme Court weighs in on the issue later this year. “Our system of justice is the best in the world. It is comprised of men and women who do the best they can, get it right more often than not, substantially more right than wrong. But there's always the possibility that mistakes will be made,” he said. “It is one thing to put somebody in jail for an extended period of time, have some new test that you can do and determine that person...

Officials have released a 911 call from a witness who saw former rap mogul “Suge” Knight strike two men with his truck, killing one and leading to a murder charge. On the recording released Thursday to The Associated Press, a shaken woman reports seeing a vehicle pull back and then forward, running over the men following a fight.... Los Angeles County prosecutors say it was a deliberate act after a fight that began at another location during a video shoot. Knight complained of chest pains after pleading not guilty to murder, attempted murder and hit-and-run. He was released from a...

Four death row inmates who are suing Ohio officials over a new state law that shields the names of companies providing lethal injection drugs want a federal court to prevent the law from taking effect in March. Attorneys for the inmates filed the motion Monday in U.S. District Court in Columbus. They want the court to stop the provisions that they say violate the right of free speech from taking effect, pending a trial on the lawsuit. […] Supporters of the new law have said that shielding the names of companies that provide lethal injection drugs is necessary to protect...

Recent botched executions aren’t doing much to sway proponents of the practice in a number of states where it remains legal — in fact, they’re causing states to look at older and potentially more brutal methods of execution, according to a recent report. Oklahoma’s most recent execution of Clayton Lockett in April was an extremely disturbing one, in which he writhed while being pumped with lethal drugs, prompting executions to eventually draw the curtains for the gallery. The warden described it as a “bloody mess,” according to the Associated Press. The execution joined a pair of others in Ohio and...

California’s death row houses 749 inmates, including 64 convicted in Orange County. From serial killers to child murderers, here is a closer look at 10 of the most notorious death row cases from O.C., as well as some facts about Death Row in California: ...

Imagine being told you are going to die in a month. Then it's a few hours. Then another month. You may be set free or you may be killed, and it all depends on events that are completely out of your control. How long could you stand it?

Pennsylvania’s chief justice wants the state Supreme Court to ban lawyers at an organization that currently handles many appeals by convicted murderers on the state's death row. Chief Justice Ronald Castille took that position in a rare single-justice opinion issued late Wednesday that resolved a number of issues surrounding a decision he wrote three years ago. In both opinions, Castille took aim at the Philadelphia-based Federal Community Defender Office, writing that the group has engaged in abusive and unethical practices that warrant removing its lawyers from all Pennsylvania cases. …