Missouri’s April 9^th exe­cu­tion of Brian Dorsey, despite wide­spread sup­port for his clemen­cy, once again gar­nered con­dem­na­tion from the European Union, which described it as a ​“inhu­man and degrad­ing prac­tice.” The EU’s state­ment high­light­ed the lack of the death penal­ty as a deter­rent and the irre­versibil­i­ty of the pun­ish­ment, not­ing that 197 death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers have been exon­er­at­ed. ​“The EU con­tin­ues to call for the uni­ver­sal abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty and for States, that main­tain the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, to imple­ment a mora­to­ri­um and move towards abo­li­tion, in line with the…

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley (pic­tured). Professor Semel joined Berkeley Law in 2001 as the first direc­tor of the school’s death penal­ty clin­ic and remains the clinic’s co-direc­tor, where stu­dents have rep­re­sent­ed indi­vid­u­als fac­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and writ­ten ami­cus briefs in death penal­ty cas­es before the United States Supreme Court. In recog­ni­tion of 38^th year anniver­sary of the land­mark US Supreme Court rul­ing in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), Professor…

On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decid­ed 4 – 3 to reverse a 2022 low­er court deci­sion and allow genet­ic test­ing of crime scene evi­dence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men con­vict­ed in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after tak­ing an Alford plea, in which they main­tained their inno­cence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a sus­pend­ed sentence. 

On April 22, 2024, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced that her office was ordered by a fed­er­al judge to review 35 death penal­ty con­vic­tions after the dis­clo­sure of evi­dence that sev­er­al pros­e­cu­tors inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed Black and Jewish peo­ple from serv­ing on a cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al in 1995. In a press con­fer­ence, DA Price indi­cat­ed that her office dis­cov­ered the hand­writ­ten notes of for­mer pros­e­cu­tors that include dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion tac­tics, sug­gest­ing ​“seri­ous mis­con­duct” per­me­at­ed the office in the 1990s. ​“It’s not lim­it­ed to one or two pros­e­cu­tors, but…

Monique Hicks, one of the twelve peo­ple who served on the Alabama jury that con­vict­ed Toforest Johnson and sen­tenced him to death, said in an op-ed pub­lished on April 22, 2024 that she now believes Mr. Johnson deserves a new tri­al. Ms. Hicks recounts the new evi­dence that has come to light in the case and writes, ​“My role in the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of an inno­cent man keeps me awake at night.” 

On April 17, the Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments in Thornell v. Jones, a case impli­cat­ing the test for inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel — and the first and only oral argu­ment in a death penal­ty case sched­uled this term. Arizona appealed the Ninth Circuit’s deci­sion vacat­ing the death sen­tence of Danny Lee Jones, which found that Mr. Jones was prej­u­diced by his attorney’s fail­ure to present key mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence as to Mr. Jones’ brain dam­age, child­hood phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse, and psy­chi­atric prob­lems. The case marks the sec­ond time the Supreme Court…

A new report issued April 17, 2024 by the UK-based inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tion Reprieve found racial dis­par­i­ties in the occur­rence of botched exe­cu­tions in the United States. As report­ed in The Guardian, Reprieve ana­lyzed all lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions between 1976 and 2023. It chron­i­cled 73 con­firmed botched pro­ce­dures and found that 8% of exe­cu­tions of Black peo­ple were botched (37 times out of 465 exe­cu­tions), com­pared with 4% for white peo­ple (28 out of 780).

On April 16, 2024, the Louisiana Senate Judiciary B Committee unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to advance a bill that would remove nitro­gen hypox­ia from the state’s avail­able meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. Introduced by state Senator Katrina Jackson-Andrews, Senate Bill 430 is sup­port­ed by the Jews Against Gassing Coalition, an orga­ni­za­tion con­sist­ing of Jewish Louisiana res­i­dents who oppose state-sanc­tioned gas exe­cu­tions. ​“We rec­og­nize, of course, that the gassing of inno­cent vic­tims in the Holocaust is quite dif­fer­ent from exe­cut­ing a con­vict­ed crim­i­nal,” said Naomi Yavneh-Klos, a mem­ber of the coali­tion and Loyola University professor.…

On April 16, 2024, the Biden Administration pro­vid­ed assur­ances to the United Kingdom that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is fac­ing extra­di­tion to the United States on espi­onage charges, would not face the death penal­ty. A hear­ing is now sched­uled in London on May 20 to eval­u­ate the assur­ances and decide whether Mr. Assange has any remain­ing legal recourse. A few weeks ear­li­er, the High Court in London grant­ed Mr. Assange a reprieve from extra­di­tion, agree­ing to grant him an appeal if the United States was unable to pro­vide assur­ances that…

On Monday, April 15, Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor issued dis­sents over the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the peti­tions of two death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers who alleged offi­cial mis­con­duct in their cas­es. In the first case, Dillion Compton alleged that Texas pros­e­cu­tors ille­gal­ly used thir­teen of their fif­teen peremp­to­ry strikes to remove female prospec­tive jurors because of their gen­der. In the sec­ond case, Kurt Michaels argued that California police offi­cers unlaw­ful­ly con­tin­ued to ques­tion him after he invoked his Miranda rights, lead­ing Mr. Michaels to even­tu­al­ly con­fess, and his confession…