Entries by Taylor Bonner

After spend­ing 32 years under a death sen­tence, on February 9, 2026, the Superior Court of the State of California, Alameda County vacat­ed the con­vic­tion and sen­tence of Franklin Lynch and ordered a new tri­al under California’s Racial Justice Act (CRJA). Mr. Lynch’s attor­neys argued that racial bias per­vad­ed his tri­al, alleg­ing the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry use of pre­emp­to­ry strikes in jury selec­tion in vio­la­tion of the Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Batson v. Kentucky, and the use…

The Constitution man­dates that juries be drawn from a​“fair cross-sec­­­tion” of the com­mu­ni­ty. Yet pub­lic opin­ion polls show that a sub­stan­tial por­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty oppos­es the death penal­ty. How, then, can the gov­ern­ment seat a jury that will fair­ly decide whether to impose the death penal­ty and pro­tect a defendant’s con­sti­tu­tion­al jury rights? The legal system’s long­stand­ing answer to this ques­tion is a pro­ce­dure called​“death qual­i­fi­ca­tion,” which…

On January 20, 2026, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) filed an ami­cus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in sup­port of Amos Wells, a Black man in Texas who was sen­tenced to death in 2016 after a tri­al marked by racial bias and harm­ful stereo­types. The brief urges the Court to grant cer­tio­rari to address the con­tin­u­ing harm caused by the false stereo­type that Black men are inher­ent­ly vio­lent. Central to Mr. Wells’ death sen­tence at tri­al was tes­ti­mo­ny about *monoamine oxidase…

“We don’t need more death. We need more care.” — Anna Lee, vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­ber — In a December 9, 2025, opin­ion arti­cle in The Tennessean, Anna Lee, a mur­der-vic­­­tim fam­i­ly mem­ber whose beloved great-uncle’s killer, Nick Sutton, was exe­cut­ed six years ago explains how the death penal­ty has not brought her fam­i­ly heal­ing or jus­tice. In the piece, Ms. Lee com­pas­sion­ate­ly describes the long-term emo­tion­al and finan­cial toll the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment system imposes…

On November 19, 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released Fatal Flaws: Innocence, Race and Wrongful Convictions, the sec­ond install­ment in its mul­ti-part series exam­in­ing racial­ized and struc­tur­al fail­ures in the nation’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. The first report of the series, Fatal Flaws: Revealing the Racial and Religious Gerrymandering of the Capital Jury, explored how the process of death qual­i­fi­ca­tion dis­torts the com­po­si­tion of capital juries.

On October 30, 2025, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Hampshire and the ACLU Capital Punishment Project joint­ly filed a 27-page ami­cus brief on behalf of Michael Addison, an African American man and the only remain­ing per­son under a death sen­tence in New Hampshire. Mr. Addison was con­vict­ed in 2008 of cap­i­tal mur­der for the fatal shoot­ing of a white Manchester police offi­cer. The fil­ing cites find­ings from the Capital Jury Project (CJP), which show that…

On October 13, 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the lat­est set of amend­ments to California’s Racial Justice Act (CRJA) into law, strength­en­ing a ground­break­ing piece of leg­is­la­tion that pro­hibits crim­i­nal con­vic­tions and sen­tences based on race, eth­nic­i­ty, or nation­al ori­gin. Under this law, cap­i­tal­ly con­vict­ed pris­on­ers can pur­sue mean­ing­ful relief, beyond just the rever­sal of a death sen­tence, if the state is found to have violated these…