Publications & Testimony

It has now been ten years since Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a bill end­ing the death penal­ty in Illinois. The abo­li­tion bill, signed on March 9, 2011, was the cul­mi­na­tion of eleven years of debate after Governor George Ryan imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2000 and then issued four par­dons and 167 com­mu­ta­tions, clear­ing the state’s death…

Arizona cor­rec­tions offi­cials have announced that the state has pro­cured a sup­ply of an exe­cu­tion drug and is now able to resume exe­cu­tions after a nearly seven-year…

NEWS (3/​2/​21) — Mississippi: Mississippi will pay death-row exoneree Curtis Flowers $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for the 23 years in prison after fac­ing six tri­als and four wrong­ful con­vic­tions for a 1996 quadru­ple mur­der in a furniture…

A Wyoming state sen­ate com­mit­tee has advanced to the full Senate a bill to repeal the state’s…

An even­ly divid­ed Indiana Supreme Court has affirmed a tri­al court rul­ing that requires the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC) to release records relat­ed to the lethal injec­tion drugs Indiana has used in car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, includ­ing the iden­ti­ties of the drug sup­pli­ers. The doc­u­ments were the sub­ject of a pub­lic records suit filed by Washington, D.C. lawyer A. Katherine Toomey under the Indiana Access to Public…

In an over­whelm­ing bipar­ti­san vote, the Kentucky House of Representatives has approved a bill that would pro­hib­it the death penal­ty for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness. On March 1, 2021, the House vot­ed by a mar­gin of 75 – 16 to pass HB 148. The bill received the sup­port of 56 Republicans and 19 Democrats in Kentucky’s Republican-dominated…

As sup­port­ers of Oklahoma death-row pris­on­er Julius Jones sub­mit­ted more than six mil­lion sig­na­tures sup­port­ing his peti­tion for clemen­cy, new evi­dence emerged that anoth­er man had com­mit­ted the killing that sent Jones…

Frustrated by the inabil­i­ty to put pris­on­ers to death, leg­is­la­tors in two states are seek­ing to jump­start the exe­cu­tion process by chang­ing the laws that gov­ern how exe­cu­tions may be con­duct­ed. After gain­ing lit­tle trac­tion in pri­or leg­isla­tive ses­sions, a bill to make elec­tro­cu­tion the default method of exe­cu­tion is mov­ing for­ward in South Carolina, which is approach­ing ten years since its last exe­cu­tion. In Montana, after…

NEWS (2/​25/​21) — Alabama: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit has denied habeas relief for Alabama death-row pris­on­er Charles Clark, who the tri­al court had sen­tenced to death based upon a non-unan­i­­mous jury sen­tenc­ing vote. Clark had argued that the tri­al court improp­er­ly ordered that he be shack­led dur­ing the tri­al, with­out an ade­quate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and with­out plac­ing the rea­sons for shack­ling him on…

Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) offi­cials repeat­ed­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed accounts of the exe­cu­tions they car­ried out in 2020 and 2021, pro­vid­ing san­i­tized descrip­tions of the exe­cu­tions that omit­ted all ref­er­ences to dra­mat­ic body move­ments and signs of dis­tress observed by media wit­ness­es, accord­ing to an Associated Press report. The sworn accounts by exe­cu­tion­ers, which fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors pro­vid­ed to an expert witness and…