Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Indiana. The last man executed in the state, excluding federal executions at Terre Haute, was the murderer Matthew Wrinkles in 2009.
The rule of felony murder is a legal doctrine in some common law jurisdictions that broadens the crime of murder: when someone is killed in the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime, the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.
Arizona State Prison Complex – Florence also known as Florence State Prison (FSP) is a former facility operated by the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC). The main FSP prison was located in Florence, Arizona. The Florence complex used to include a unit in Picacho in unincorporated Pinal County however, the Picacho Unit was closed and destroyed in early 2013. The Globe Unit in Globe is now part of ASPC-Phoenix.
Gregg v. Georgia, Proffitt v. Florida, Jurek v. Texas, Woodson v. North Carolina, and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. It reaffirmed the Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon Gregg. The set of cases is referred to by a leading scholar as the July 2 Cases, and elsewhere referred to by the lead case Gregg. The court set forth the two main features that capital sentencing procedures must employ in order to comply with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishments". The decision essentially ended the de facto moratorium on the death penalty imposed by the Court in its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia 408 U.S. 238 (1972). Justice Brennan dissent famously argued that "The calculated killing of a human being by the State involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person's humanity... An executed person has indeed 'lost the right to have rights."
Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court applied the rule of Apprendi v. New Jersey to capital sentencing schemes, holding that the Sixth Amendment requires a jury to find the aggravating factors necessary for imposing the death penalty. Ring overruled a portion of Walton v. Arizona, which had rejected that contention.
On May 22, 1995, 16-year-old Jimmy Farris, the son of a Los Angeles Police Department officer, was stabbed to death. Farris and his friend, Michael McLoren, were next to a clubhouse-type fort in McLoren's backyard. Four acquaintances of Farris and McLoren jumped the chainlink fence and approached the fort. There was a fight inside the fort. Farris and McLoren went into the house, bleeding from stab wounds, while the other four climbed back over the fence and left. Farris died before paramedics arrived. McLoren was airlifted to UCLA Medical Center.
Most jurisdictions in the United States of America maintain the felony murder rule. In essence, the felony murder rule states that when an offender kills in the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime, the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder. It means that the common law malice required for murder is "implied as a matter of law for homicides arising from felonies." It is a widely criticized feature of American criminal law. Initially, it was widely believed by scholars that the felony murder rule had originated in England. However, more recent scholarship has argued that it likely originated in America separately from England. Its historic roots have been called "deep but terribly obscure".
Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982), is a United States Supreme Court case. It was a 5–4 decision in which the United States Supreme Court applied its capital proportionality principle, to set aside the death penalty for the driver of a getaway car, in a robbery-murder of an elderly Floridian couple. The court ruled that the imposition of the death penalty under the felony murder rule when the defendant did not intentionally kill the victim constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the United States constitution.
Walton v. Arizona, 497 U.S. 639 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court case that upheld two important aspects of the capital sentencing scheme in Arizona—judicial sentencing and the aggravating factor "especially heinous, cruel, or depraved"—as not unconstitutionally vague. The Court overruled the first of these holdings in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584 (2002). The second of these holdings has yet to be overturned.
Bruce Alfred Johnston Sr. was the leader of one of the most notorious gangs in the history of Pennsylvania, U.S. The gang started in the 1960s and was rounded up in 1978 after his son, Bruce Jr., testified against him. The 1986 film At Close Range is based loosely on Johnston's gang.
Capital punishment was abolished in Colorado in 2020. It was legal from 1974 until 2020 prior to it being abolished in all future cases.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Florida.
In the United States, the law for murder varies by jurisdiction. In many US jurisdictions there is a hierarchy of acts, known collectively as homicide, of which first-degree murder and felony murder are the most serious, followed by second-degree murder and, in a few states, third-degree murder, which in other states is divided into voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter such as reckless homicide and negligent homicide, which are the least serious, and ending finally in justifiable homicide, which is not a crime. However, because there are at least 52 relevant jurisdictions, each with its own criminal code, this is a considerable simplification.
On July 30, 2010, three inmates escaped from the Kingman Arizona State Prison, operated as a for-profit medium-security prison in Golden Valley by Utah's Management and Training Corporation. It was owned by the Mohave County Industrial Development Authority. A female accomplice assisted the escape. Over the next three weeks, local law enforcement captured prisoners Daniel Renwick in Colorado; Tracy Province in Wyoming; and finally, with the U.S. Marshals, John McCluskey in Arizona, along with the trio's accomplice Casslyn Welch.
A Killer in the Family is a 1983 American made-for-television crime film directed by Richard T. Heffron. The film is based on the Tison v. Arizona case, which took place in Arizona in 1978. The film first aired on ABC on October 30, 1983, and was released on DVD by Warner Home Video in 2010.
Dawson v. Delaware, 503 U.S. 159 (1992), was a United States Supreme Court decision that ruled that a person's rights of association and due process, as granted under the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, cannot be infringed upon if such an association has no bearing on the case at hand.
Last Rampage is a 2017 American crime drama film directed by Dwight Little. The screenplay by Alvaro Rodriguez and Jason Rosenblatt is based on the non-fiction book Last Rampage: The Escape of Gary Tison by University of Arizona Political Science Professor James W. Clarke, and details the true story of Tison's 1978 prison escape and subsequent murders. The film stars Robert Patrick as Tison, Heather Graham as his wife Dorothy, and Chris Browning as his accomplice Randy Greenawalt. Bruce Davison plays a fictional law enforcement official pursuing Tison, and Alex MacNicoll, Skyy Moore, and Casey Thomas Brown portray Tison's three sons.
Jennifer Ann Mee is a convicted American murderer known as the "Hiccup Girl" for her long-lasting case of the hiccups. Mee appeared on national American television shows such as NBC's Today Show many times. Mee was arrested for first-degree murder in 2010. After a trial she was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2013. M. William Phelps wrote a book about her that was published in 2016. Her transmutation from "media darling" to convicted murderer attracted renewed national attention.
Murder in Wisconsin law constitutes the intentional killing, under circumstances defined by law, of people within or under the jurisdiction of the U.S. state of Wisconsin.
Randall Greenawalt was an American serial killer and mass murderer. Originally sentenced to life imprisonment for two murders committed in 1974, Greenawalt later became notorious for escaping together with fellow murderer Gary Tison and his three sons from prison, embarking on a two-week killing spree through Arizona and Colorado that left six people dead in 1978. He was promptly sentenced to death and thereafter executed in 1997, with his case serving as the basis for the Supreme Court decision Tison v. Arizona.
