Publications & Testimony

The Nevada State Assembly has passed a bill that would abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty and resen­tence the pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on its death row to life with­out parole. It was the first time any death-penal­­ty abo­li­tion bill had been report­ed out of com­mit­tee and con­sid­ered by either house of the…

After more than 40 years on Florida​’s death row, Sonny Boy Oats (pic­tured), one of the nation’s longest serv­ing death-row pris­on­ers, has been found inel­i­gi­ble for the…

Nearly sev­en years after the botched exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood put the death penal­ty on hold in Arizona, state offi­cials are seek­ing to resume exe­cu­tions. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced on April 6, 2021 that he is ask­ing the Arizona Supreme Court to set a brief­ing sched­ule and issue exe­cu­tion war­rants for death-row pris­on­ers Clarence Dixon and Frank Atwood. At present, no state but Texas has…

NEWS (4/​8/​21) — Nevada: The Nevada Supreme Court has grant­ed cap­i­tal defen­dant Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman​’s emer­gency motion to stay a pre­ma­ture dead­line the tri­al court had set for his lawyers to file a claim that he is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. A tri­al court in Reno had set an April 20 dead­line for Martinez-Guzman, four months ear­li­er than the time…

Just one out of every six death sen­tences imposed in Ohio in the past forty years has result­ed in an exe­cu­tion, accord­ing to the Ohio Attorney General’s 2020 Ohio Capital Crimes Annual Report. The report, released by Attorney General Dave Yost on April 1, 2021, crit­i­cized the state’s death-penal­­ty sys­tem as​“increas­ing­ly time-con­­sum­ing, costly,…

More than thir­ty years after a Florida judge sen­tenced him to death fol­low­ing an 8 – 4 sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion by an all-white jury, Crosley Green (pic­tured)…

In a wide-rang­ing six-part edi­to­r­i­al series ana­lyz­ing sys­temic flaws in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty, the edi­to­r­i­al board of the South Florida Sun Sentinel has called for the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. “[I]t is past time to repeal it, here in Florida and nation­wide,” the…

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to recon­sid­er its deci­sion rec­og­niz­ing the trib­al sov­er­eign­ty of the Chickasaw Nation over crimes com­mit­ted by or against Native Americans on Chickasaw…

A fed­er­al dis­trict court has ruled that Texas uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly denied DNA test­ing to a death-row pris­on­er who is alive today only because of a last-minute stay of exe­cu­tion grant­ed because the state refused to allow his reli­gious advis­er to accom­pa­ny him in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. In a 26-page rul­ing issued on March 23, 2021, Judge Hilda Tagle of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas paved the way for Ruben Gutierrez (pic­tured) to…

NEWS (3/​31/​21) — Florida: After find­ing that Florida death-row pris­on­er William Greg Thomas was enti­tled to present an untime­ly habeas cor­pus peti­tion because his pri­or lawyer had aban­doned him, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reviewed but denied Thomas’ chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. The court held that Thomas was enti­tled to equi­table tolling of the habeas cor­pus statute of lim­i­ta­tions but ruled that his ineffective…