An Indiana judge has declined to stay a federal execution scheduled for Thursday at the Terre Haute federal prison. Meanwhile, another judge is considering whether the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic means all upcoming executions should indefinitely be put on hold.
As Donald Trump’s presidency winds down, his administration is ratcheting up the pace of federal executions despite a surge of coronavirus cases in prisons, announcing plans for five starting Thursday and concluding just days before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
The Justice Department is investigating whether there was a secret scheme to lobby White House officials for a pardon as well as a related plot to offer a hefty political contribution in exchange for clemency, according to a court document unsealed Tuesday.
Disputing President Donald Trump’s persistent, baseless claims, Attorney General William Barr declared the U.S. Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that could change the outcome of the 2020 election.
The federal government prepared Thursday to execute an inmate at the federal prison in Terre Haute who was condemned for kidnapping and raping a 16-year-old Texas girl, bludgeoning her with a shovel and burying her alive.
Attorney General William Barr has authorized federal prosecutors across the U.S. to pursue “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they exist, before the 2020 presidential election is certified, despite no evidence of widespread fraud.
Indiana has received more than $5 million in federal funding to combat violent crime, including money designated for curbing crime in Indianapolis, where annual homicides have reached record levels.
President Donald Trump portrays the hundreds of people arrested nationwide in protests against racial injustice as violent urban left-wing radicals. But an Associated Press review of thousands of pages of court documents tell a different story.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday reversed a stay of execution for a Louisiana man scheduled to die by lethal injection in an Indiana federal prison, finding he does not meet the stringent requirements for savings-clause eligibility.
The U.S. government on Tuesday executed a former soldier who said an obsession with witchcraft led him to kill a Georgia nurse he believed had put a spell on him. The lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute was the sixth carried out this year after a nearly two-decade moratorium.
Attorney General William Barr took aim at his own Justice Department on Wednesday night, criticizing prosecutors for behaving as “headhunters” in their pursuit of prominent targets in what he said were “ill-conceived” political probes. Barr also was criticized for comparing pandemic lockdowns to slavery.
The scheduled federal execution of a 10-year-old Kansas girl’s killer was back on track Friday after an appellate panel tossed a lower court’s ruling that would have required the government to get a drug prescription before it could use pentobarbital to kill the inmate at the federal prison in Terre Haute.
A judge in Washington halted the federal government’s planned Friday execution of a man who kidnapped, raped and killed a 10-year-old Kansas girl, saying the law requires the government to get a prescription for the drug it plans to use.
Vice President Mike Pence forcefully defended law enforcement but made no mention of the Black Americans killed by police this year as he addressed Republican convention proceedings that unfolded amid new protests against racial injustice following the latest shooting.
The only Native American on federal death row was put to death Wednesday, despite objections from many Navajo leaders who had urged President Donald Trump to halt the execution on the grounds it would violate tribal culture and sovereignty.
The only Native American on federal death row is set to die Wednesday for the slayings of a 9-year-old and her grandmother nearly two decades ago, though many Navajos are hoping for last-minute intervention by President Donald Trump to halt the execution at the federal prison in Terre Haute.
President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr have touted Operation Legend, spread across nine U.S. cities including Indianapolis, as a much-needed answer to spiking crime that Trump claims is caused, at least in part, by the police reform movement and protests that have swept the U.S. since George Floyd’s death in May.
An inmate suffered “extreme pain” as he received a dose of pentobarbital during just the second federal execution following a 17-year lag, according to court filings by lawyers representing one of the inmates scheduled to be executed next.
Attorney General William Barr said he would be “vehemently opposed” to any attempt to pardon former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, after the president suggested he might consider it.
Indiana State Police agreed Friday to stop blocking roads to the federal prison in Terre Haute where federal executions resumed last month and are set to continue, backing down after anti-death penalty activists said in a lawsuit the roadblocks impeded their free speech rights.