Publications & Testimony

In a coincidence that brought attention to the aging of death row across the United States, the oldest death-row prisoners in Tennessee and Texas faced execution in their respective states on April 21, 2022. After the U.S. Supreme Court denied stays of execution for both prisoners, their cases took different paths. Oscar Franklin Smith, a 71-year-old who spent 22 years on death row in Tennessee, was notified while receiving communion that he had received a reprieve. Carl Wayne Buntion…

On April 22, 1987, the United States Supreme Court ruled in McCleskey v. Kemp that the same types of statistical data that were routinely accepted as proof of racial discrimination in housing, employment, education, and the denial of other civil rights were not sufficient as proof that a death sentence had been unconstitutionally imposed. Although Warren McCleskey had presented a sophisticated statistical analysis of data from more than 2,500 murder cases in Georgia that showed that…

Days after his office asked to set an execution date for Texas death row prisoner John Ramirez, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez (pictured) asked Ramirez’s trial court to withdraw the order. Gonzalez, a former defense attorney who was elected in 2016 on a platform of criminal justice reform, said he has come to view the death penalty as “unethical” and that the request for an execution date was the result of a miscommunication within his office. “The undersigned District Attorney…

A Missouri capital defendant whose jury was the first in nine years to recommend the death penalty in the state is challenging the verdict as based solely on a nonexistent aggravating factor. On April 1, 2022, a St. Charles County jury in Marvin D. Rice’s capital resentencing trial recommended that he be sentenced to death for killing his ex-girlfriend, Annette Durham, during a dispute over custody of their child. In a Motion for new trial filed in the St. Charles County Circuit Court on April…

Forensics experts and three exonerees wrongfully convicted of murder based upon junk-science diagnoses of Shaken Baby Syndrome are urging the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) to overturn the conviction of death-row prisoner Robert Roberson (pictured with his daughter, Nikki). In separate friend-of-the-court briefs filed on April 8, 2022, the two groups argue that Shaken Baby Syndrome is an invalid medical diagnosis that should never be used as the basis of a murder conviction and that…

An amicus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Arizona death-row prisoner John Montenegro Cruz presents evidence that Latinx defendants are particularly vulnerable to juror bias regarding determinations of future dangerousness. LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a civil rights organization that “advocates for and defends the constitutional rights of Latinos under the law,” filed an amicus brief in the case of Cruz v. Arizona supporting Cruz’s argument that Arizona violated his right to due…

Kentucky has become the second state in the U.S. to bar imposing the death penalty on those diagnosed as seriously mentally ill. On April 8, 2022, Governor Andy Beshear (pictured) signed HB 269 into law, as Kentucky joined neighboring Ohio in exempting severely mentally ill defendants from capital punishment. The enactment of the new law by a Republican-dominated legislature and a Democratic governor reflected broad bipartisan support for limiting the scope of Kentucky’s death penalty statute.

A Nashville trial judge has denied a Tennessee death-row prisoner’s motion to reopen his case and halt his scheduled April 21, 2022 execution in light of new DNA evidence. In a motion filed April 4, 2022, lawyers for Oscar Smith had argued that evidence from “touch DNA” — a new DNA testing technology — on an awl used in the murder of Smith’s estranged wife and her two sons in 1989 “definitively excluded” Smith and suggested that another, unknown male had been involved in the murders. The three…

A Harrisburg, Pennsylvania trial court has granted the application of the Dauphin County District Attorney’s office to withdraw all charges against Samuel Randolph, IV, completing his exoneration of a double murder that sent him to Pennsylvania’s death row in 2003. On April 6, 2022, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to review the county prosecutors’ appeal of a federal court ruling granting Randolph a new trial, District Attorney Fran Chardo filed a motion to enter an order of…

Ketanji Brown Jackson has been confirmed as the first African-American woman to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. On April 7, 2022, by a vote of 53 – 47, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Jackson to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she previously served as a law clerk. Jackson will be sworn in after Breyer’s retirement takes effect at the end of the 2021 – 22 Supreme Court term. “I have dedicated my career to…