Death Penalty

In a reversal of a state court, the justices say Florida's rule ignores norms in the psychiatric profession. The opinion also cites the Eighth Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment.

With murders down dramatically, death penalty support has fallen far from its peak 20 years ago. Problems with executions, meanwhile, have made many Democrats, at least, skeptical about the practice.

In 2002, the Supreme Court banned the execution of the "mentally retarded." Monday the court is looking at the case of a convicted man who says Florida's definition of mental disability is too strict.

A drug trafficker who placed a pipe bomb in a gift-wrapped microwave oven in a plot to kill two potential murder witnesses was executed Wednesday for the…

Police in Coral Springs say they have solved a woman's 1990 slaying, with advances in DNA identification pinning the crime on a man executed in 2011 for…

States are turning to new drugs for executions because of a supply shortage that's been years in the making. Now legal battles are springing up, questioning whether the new alternatives violate inmates' rights.

The standard by which a felon is judged to be mentally competent to face execution will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court agreed Monday to hear a case involving a Florida man convicted of a 1978 murder; he has an IQ that's close to the state threshold.

William Happ, who expressed "agonizing shame" before his execution Tuesday night at Florida State Prison in Starke, was the first prisoner put to death in…