Entries by Leah Roemer

This week we are featuring some articles from the first part of 2025 that we think are worth another look. We’ll be back with new articles next week. This article originally ran on February 11, 2025. When California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on executions in 2019, he said that the state’s “death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure.” He explained that the death penalty “has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, Black and brown, or can’t afford…

When a lawyer makes a mistake, who suffers the consequences? The “agency principle” says the client does, under the rationale that clients choose their lawyers and authorize their actions. But courts universally apply this principle to all attorney-client relationships, including when indigent, isolated death-sentenced prisoners are appointed attorneys by the state, with little or no means of controlling their lawyers’ actions. Many commentators have noted the problems applying this theory to…

The single most common outcome for a death sentence in the modern era is for it to be reversed on appeal due to a constitutional violation. Most people whose sentences are reversed get resentenced to life in prison or less, but some prosecutors persist in seeking new death sentences even after multiple reversals. A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of the 14 people sentenced to death four or more times for the same crime finds that prosecutorial misconduct, including racial bias…

The Supreme Court has consistently held that “death is different”: the “qualitative difference between death and other penalties calls for a greater degree of reliability when the death sentence is imposed.” As a result, capital defendants pursue a series of mandatory and discretionary appeals to ensure that mistakes of constitutional significance are identified and corrected. However, death-sentenced prisoners in Louisiana recently argued that the state issued execution warrants before they…

On March 31, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of Lance Shockley of Missouri, the 36^th death-sentenced person to be denied certiorari by the Court this year. At trial, Mr. Shockley’s jury foreman was removed before the sentencing phase based on evidence of serious bias — but Mr. Shockley’s attorney declined the opportunity to question the foreman or other jurors about the misconduct, and his conviction, which the foreman participated in, was allowed to stand. Mr. Shockley’s claim on…

As closing arguments of his trial began in Johnston County, North Carolina, Hasson Bacote watched as Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler urged the jury to sentence him to death. Mr. Bacote, a Black man, had been convicted of fatally shooting 18-year-old Anthony Surles during a robbery when Mr. Bacote was just 21 years old. Mr. Bacote admitted he had fired a single shot out of a trailer, but said he did not know that he hit anyone. “Hasson Bacote is a thug: cold-blooded and without…

In a three-day span from March 18 to March 20, four men were executed in four different states. Two of the men put to death, in Louisiana and Arizona, were the first executed in their state in years. While the close timing of the executions resulted from independent state-level decisions and individualized legal developments rather than any coordinated national effort, all four executions raised serious constitutional concerns. March 18: Jessie Hoffman (LA) On March 18, Louisiana executed…

When California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on executions in 2019, he said that the state’s “death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure.” He explained that the death penalty “has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, Black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation…[while providing] no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent.” In 2024, California courts agreed that execution was not the appropriate punishment for at least 45…

At Brenda Andrew’s 2004 trial in Oklahoma for the murder of her husband, the prosecutor called witnesses to testify about her “provocative” clothing and her previous sexual relationships, and questioned “whether a good mother would dress or behave” the way she had. Jurors heard Ms. Andrew called a “hoochie” and a “slut puppy.” In his closing argument, the prosecutor opened a suitcase and showed the jury Ms. Andrew’s underwear, asking, “The grieving widow packs this in her appropriate act of…

When Marion Bowman was arrested at age 20 for the murder of Kandee Martin, society did not consider him mature enough to drink alcohol, rent a car, or enter a casino. Yet he was deemed old enough to be sentenced to death. Now 44, he has spent over half his life on South Carolina’s death row and is scheduled for execution on January 31. “Retribution is not proportional if the law’s most severe penalty is imposed on one whose culpability or blameworthiness is diminished, to a substantial degree…