death penalty

June 22, 2022 - Soon Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) will have appointed a majority of justices on his state's Supreme Court, just as it considers striking down precedents guaranteeing abortion rights. He's considering a judge who'd bring to the court sorely needed gender and racial diversity — but not ideological diversity.

September 24, 2021 - It's been 10 years since Georgia executed Troy Davis despite questions about his guilt and calls for mercy from world leaders. One Southern state has outlawed capital punishment since then, but most states in the region still have death sentences on the books.

June 26, 2020 - In 1978, Southern Exposure, the print forerunner of Facing South, interviewed Ingle, one of the founders of the Southern Coalition for Jails and Prisons, for an issue on prisons. Ingle continues his prisoner advocacy work today in Nashville, Tennessee, and Facing South recently talked with him about the sea changes he's witnessed in that time in both the U.S. prison system and the prison reform movement.

June 3, 2020 - Stacked with appointments from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Supreme Court is quickly overturning previous decisions that barred the death penalty for some defendants with intellectual disabilities and those who were sentenced by non-unanimous juries.

May 4, 2020 - The decision is the first time the court has ruled against prosecutors on a claim of discrimination against black jurors. The court's only Republican justice dissented.

February 13, 2020 - Supreme courts in every other Southern state have addressed the problem of racist jury selection. But in the decades since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such discrimination unconstitutional, North Carolina courts have turned away every claim.

October 10, 2019 - Reed, who is African-American, was convicted in 1998 of raping and murdering a white woman based on DNA evidence — but he says they were having a secret affair, which the woman's cousin confirms. The case fits a pattern of questionable convictions of Black men for crimes against whites in Texas.