On September 30, Richard Glossip from Oklahoma is due to be killed by lethal injection. He is charged with hiring his colleague to kill his employer, Barry Van Treese. The judgment is based on the testimony of the Glossip’s colleague, however, numerous supporters of Glossip considered this testimony to be false. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal denied Glossip’s stay of execution.
The third person sentenced to be executed this week is a convicted serial killer of Salvadoran origin. Alfredo Prieto’s execution, scheduled for October 1, will be the first capital punishment carried out in Virginia in almost three years.
Capital punishment is currently legal in 31 US states, while the practice has been abolished in the other 19 states.
More than 800 people have been executed in the United States in the past 15 years. The largest number of executions, 85, occurred in 2000. Thirty-five people were executed in the United States in 2014.
According to the US National Academy of Sciences, the number of people sentenced to death in the United States for crimes they did not commit is estimated at approximately 4 percent.
