Publications & Testimony

On March 24, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed lower court orders that had denied a Texas death-row prisoner’s request for his pastor to touch him and audibly pray during his execution. In ruling for John Henry Ramirez (pictured), the Court emphasized Texas’ ability to prevent any delay of his execution by simply creating reasonable procedures to allow Ramirez the accommodations he seeks. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion of the court, joined by seven other Justices. Justice Clarence…

An Ohio appeals court has ordered that death-row prisoner Tyrone Noling (pictured) be granted access to prosecutors’ and law enforcement files that may contain exculpatory evidence that has been hidden for decades from the defense. On March 14, 2022, the Ohio Court of Appeals reversed a July 2021 ruling by the Portage County Court of Common Pleas that had denied Noling’s motion to review the file of the Portage County Prosecutor in his case and the investigative files of the Portage County…

Fewer countries are using the death penalty for drug offenses, but according to a new global report, executions increased in those that did and took place in proceedings characterized by authoritarianism and secrecy. In its eleventh annual report on The Death Penalty for Drug Offenses: Global Overview 2021, released mid-March 2022, the international drug monitor Harm Reduction International (HRI) found that eight “high application” nations contributed to an increase in known death sentences…

March 25, 2022 will mark the end of the only death penalty case in Wyoming — or at least the family of Lisa Marie Kimmell hopes it will. The family traveled from Colorado and Arizona to offer in-person victim-impact statements at the January 21, 2022 sentencing hearing where Dale Wayne Eaton (pictured), who had been Wyoming’s only death-row prisoner, was scheduled to be resentenced to life. But as they waited in a Casper courtroom for the proceeding to start, Eaton was nowhere to be found. The…

South Carolina has completed preparations to execute the state’s death-row prisoners by firing squad. In a news release issued on March 18, 2022, the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) announced that it had notified the state attorney general’s office that SCDC “is now able to carry out an execution by firing squad as required by law.” The announcement removed a major hurdle in South Carolina’s efforts to restart executions. The state has not carried out any executions since 2011…

Military prosecutors and defense attorneys are reportedly discussing plea deals that could take the death penalty off the table in the Guantánamo military commission cases of five men accused of involvement in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The negotiations, first reported by the New York Times on March 15, 2022 and subsequently confirmed by defense counsel, would require alleged 9/11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others to plead…

A Pennsylvania trial court has granted a new trial to death-row prisoner Kevin Dowling (pictured), finding that prosecutors withheld evidence that would have shown he was 40 miles away when their sole eyewitness claimed to have seen him near the murder scene. In a ruling issued February 22, 2022, Lebanon County Senior Judge Robert J. Eby, sitting by designation in Dowling’s York County case, also found that prosecutors failed to correct the testimony of a state trooper who fabricated a…

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed 81 people on March 12, 2022, the largest mass execution in the modern history of the country, eliciting outrage from United Nations and non-governmental human rights organizations. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet issued a statement March 14 saying that the executions did not conform to “international human rights and humanitarian law and may amount to a war crime.” “I condemn Saudi Arabia’s mass execution,” she said. Saudi…

Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk is asking a Tennessee trial court to vacate the death sentence imposed on Byron Black (pictured), agreeing that the Nashville man, who is scheduled to be executed in August 2022, is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible to be executed. In a pleading filed in the Davidson County Criminal Court on March 9, 2022, Funk wrote that two mental health experts historically relied upon by Tennessee prosecutors in death-penalty cases had concluded…