Andrew Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He is a legal analyst for 60 Minutes and CBS Radio News, and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice.
A divided court doubled down on its 2002 Atkins decision, ruling that Florida can't kill Freddie Lee Hall just because his IQ has sometimes passed an arbitrary mark.
Missouri plans to kill a convicted murderer Wednesday, but his health and the state's secrecy about lethal-injection procedures raise serious constitutional issues.
A new book suggests that humans' urge to mercy evolved alongside our urge for vengeance. Has the practice of hiding prisoners and executions away stifled the mercy?
By allowing non-unanimous verdicts in murder trials, the state makes it possible for prosecutors to accept minority jurors—and then discount their views.
The retired Supreme Court justice would like to add five words to the Eight Amendment and do away with capital punishment in America. It's a shame he didn't vote that way during his 35 years on the Supreme Court.
The Arizona sheriff is in trouble again, just in time for a new run for governor—this time for getting caught on videotape disrespecting a federal court order that highlighted his longstanding discriminatory police practices.
The state wants to execute a 56-year-old mentally ill woman on March 27th, even though no one now seems to believe that she murdered the husband who had battered and abused her for years.