Romell Broom knew he was about to die when the Ohio prison warden came to his cell, escorted by guards, and read his death warrant. A court had rejected his final appeal.

In dozens of capital cases in recent years, appeals court judges, some of whom have ruled in favor of the death penalty many times, have complained that Congress and the Supreme Court have raised daunting barriers for death row prisoners to appeal their convictions, and in many cases the judges have taken on their colleagues.

Opponents of the death penalty looking to exonerate wrongly accused prisoners say their efforts have been hobbled by the dwindling size of America’s newsrooms, and particularly the disappearance of investigative reporting at many regional papers.

New death sentences in the United States were at or near a three-decade low this year and the number of people executed will be the lowest since 1994, according to a new report.

Ohio must stop using a common combination of three chemicals to execute condemned inmates because they may produce excruciating pain, a state court judge there ruled Tuesday.

States began moving forward with plans for executions this week after the Supreme Court declined last Wednesday to review the appeals of death row inmates who had challenged lethal-injection methods in nearly a dozen states.

Justice John Paul Stevens was one of the co-authors of the Supreme Court's 1976 decision reinstating the death penalty, but he announced yesterday that he now believes capital punishment is unconstitutional.

We believe that the death penalty, no matter how it is administered, is unconstitutional and wrong. If a state does execute anyone, it must do so in a way that is humane and does not impose needless suffering. Kentucky’s method does not meet that standard.

We have long opposed the death penalty. But if capital punishment is to be carried out, it should be done as humanely as possible by a method that causes no pain.

Why have states so doggedly and uniformly clung to an execution method with the potential to inflict intense pain when a simpler one is readily available?

Last June during a panel discussion in Ottawa about terrorism and the use of torture, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stood up for the TV torturer extraordinaire and hero of Fox Broadcasting's "24."

The [UN] General Assembly adopted a moratorium on the death penalty Tuesday, overcoming opposition from the United States, China and others that argued each nation should be able to choose for itself how to combat crime.

The New Jersey Senate voted Monday to make the state the first in the country to repeal the death penalty since 1976, when the United States Supreme Court set guidelines for the nation’s current system of capital punishment.

The use of lethal injections in the US has led to at least nine bungled executions, including one in which the prisoner took 69 minutes to die and another in which the condemned man complained five times: "It don't work," a report by Amnesty International says today.

The Justice Department is putting the final touches on regulations that could give Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales important new sway over death penalty cases in California and other states, including the power to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.