Publications & Testimony

Ohio has banned the death penal­ty for defen­dants who were severe­ly men­tal­ly ill at the time of the offense. On January 9, 2021, Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) signed into law House Bill 136, which pro­hibits impos­ing the death penal­ty on or car­ry­ing it out against indi­vid­u­als whose severe men­tal ill­ness at the time of the offense sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired their judg­ment, capac­i­ty, or abil­i­ty to appre­ci­ate the nature of their…

The fed­er­al government’s his­tor­i­cal­ly aber­rant exe­cu­tion spree has been fraught with irreg­u­lar­i­ties and ​“has tram­pled over an array of bar­ri­ers, both legal and prac­ti­cal,” accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive report by the non-prof­it news organization,…

Calling the death penal­ty ​“inef­fec­tive, racial­ly based, hyp­o­crit­i­cal and inhu­mane,” St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell (pic­tured) has renewed his pledge to nev­er autho­rize a cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion. In a December 23, 2020 op-ed in the St. Louis American, Bell urged ​“all pros­e­cu­tors in Missouri who cur­rent­ly con­sid­er the death penal­ty an option to…

Witness to Innocence, the nation­al orga­ni­za­tion of U.S. death-row exonerees, has released a series of short videos under the tag “#ImLivingProof,” fea­tur­ing the sto­ries of men and women who had been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. The series, pro­duced by film­mak­er Martin Schoeller with fund­ing from the Art for Justice Fund, attempts to per­son­al­ize the dan­gers of the death penal­ty by show­ing the pub­lic liv­ing proof that inno­cent peo­ple are sen­tenced to…

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has removed a senior prison offi­cial from his posi­tion as a death-row coun­selor in the wake of charges that he used an anony­mous Twitter account to troll a death-penal­ty activist and to mock fed­er­al death-row…

One week before the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment intends to put three pris­on­ers to death, two of the sched­uled exe­cu­tions remain in doubt after rul­ings by fed­er­al courts in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. The sched­uled January 12, 2021 exe­cu­tion of Lisa Montgomery (pic­tured, left) appeared to be back on after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed a dis­trict court rul­ing that had vacat­ed her exe­cu­tion date. At the same time, the sched­uled January 15, 2021 exe­cu­tion of…

After a sev­en­teen-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, the Republic of Kazakhstan has for­mal­ly abol­ished the death…

Romell Broom (pic­tured), who sur­vived a botched exe­cu­tion attempt in September 2009, has died on Ohio​’s death row of sus­pect­ed COVID-19 com­pli­ca­tions. He was 64 years old and had spent more than half his life on death…

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has amend­ed its pro­fes­sion­al code of ethics to pro­hib­it mem­bers from design­ing exe­cu­tion cham­bers or spaces to be used for tor­ture, includ­ing long-term solitary…