Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman and judged incorrigible though he was only 13 at the time of the attack. ...more

November 8, 2009

The Florida Supreme Court revised standard jury instructions for death penalty cases Thursday in ways the justices hope will reduce widespread confusion among jurors disclosed by an American Bar Association survey. ...more

October 31, 2009

Tales of mental illness and a hard-luck childhood have become standard defense testimony in death penalty cases. ...more

March 20, 2009

Luc Pierre-Charles Jr. will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the slayings of two Wesley Chapel High students. ...more

March 19, 2009

An execution-style slaying in a Bartow drug house is the subject of a rare, federal death penalty trial starting this week. ...more

February 23, 2009

Death penalty cases, by their very nature, are significantly different court proceedings than, say, a drug trafficking case. ...more

November 19, 2008

There will most likely be a runoff in the empty circuit judge's seat in the Inverness-based Fifth Circuit's Group 3. ...more

August 27, 2008

Anyone interested in learning why death penalty cases take years to resolve should take a look at the prosecution of Faunce Levon Pearce. ...more

June 14, 2008

Nearly seven years ago, then-Circuit Judge Maynard Swanson unloaded on Lawrence Joey Smith in a 32-page sentencing order sending Smith to death row. ...more

February 23, 2008

A methamphetamine dealer who gunned down a sheriff's deputy during a traffic stop in Southern California. A man in Arizona who killed his ex-girlfriend's parents and brother and snatched his children. A man who suffocated his baby daughter and left her body in a tool bag on an expressway overpass near Chicago. ...more

January 18, 2008