News & Developments
Innocence
May 03, 2024
Articles of Interest: Former Pennsylvania Death Row Prisoner Jimmy Dennis Awarded Compensation After Years-Long Legal Battle
On April 25, 2024, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania jury awarded $16 million to former death row prisoner Jimmy Dennis (pictured), who was wrongfully convicted and spent 25 years in prison. Following nine days of trial, jurors determined that the city of Philadelphia owes Mr. Dennis $10 million, and the two detectives who “engaged in malicious or wanton misconduct” owe him an additional $3 million each. Mr. Dennis was sentenced to death in 1991 for a murder he maintained he could not have committed, and in 2013, a federal judge overturned his…
Read MoreNew Voices
May 02, 2024
Articles of Interest: Missouri and Oklahoma Corrections Officials Describe Psychological Toll of Performing Executions
An April 28, 2024 report by Ed Pilkington in The Guardian chronicles the trauma experiences by prison officials assigned to carry out executions. Oklahoma correctional officers asked Attorney General Gentner Drummond to slow the pace of executions, citing “lasting trauma,” Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and alcohol abuse among staff due to frequent executions in the state. Former corrections director Justin Jones told Mr. Pilkington, “It affects your mental state when it becomes so routine,” to perform executions. When AG Drummond brought the request to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, Judge…
Read MoreHuman Rights
May 01, 2024
Worldwide Wednesday International Roundup: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Uganda, United States, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe
Missouri’s April 9th 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…
Read MoreRace
Apr 30, 2024
Discussions with DPIC Podcast: Professor Elisabeth Semel on the Implications of Batson v. Kentucky and California’s Capital Punishment System
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 38th year anniversary of the landmark US Supreme Court ruling in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), Professor…
Read MoreApr 29, 2024
Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the “West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993
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.
Read MoreProsecutorial Accountability
Apr 26, 2024
Federal Judge Orders Alameda County District Attorney to Review 35 Capital Cases Following Disclosure of Prosecutorial Misconduct in Jury Selection
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…
Read MoreInnocence
Apr 25, 2024
Articles of Interest: Juror Who Sentenced Toforest Johnson to Death Now Believes He Is Innocent
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.”
Read MoreUnited States Supreme Court
Apr 24, 2024
Supreme Court Roundup: Justices Hear Oral Arguments on Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, Cruel and Unusual Punishment; Defend Positions on Stays
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…
Read MoreLethal Injection
Apr 23, 2024
Articles of Interest: Reprieve Issues New Report on Botched Executions and Racial Disparities
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).
Read MoreMethods of Execution
Apr 22, 2024
Louisiana Senate Committee Approves Legislation Supported by Jewish Community to Remove Nitrogen Hypoxia as Possible Method of Execution
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.…
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