Publications & Testimony

The Mississippi Supreme Court has grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Eddie Lee Howard, Jr. (pic­tured), find­ing that the com­bi­na­tion of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid bite-mark evi­dence used to con­vict him and new DNA evi­dence enti­tled him to a new tri­al in the 1992 mur­der and alleged rape of an 84-year-old white…

More pris­on­ers in the United States have died in the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic than have been exe­cut­ed in the coun­try in past two decades, new prison data shows, and more California death-row pris­on­ers have been killed by the virus than have been exe­cut­ed in the state since…

NEWS (8/​28/​20) — The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment exe­cut­ed Keith Nelson on August 28. He was the fifth fed­er­al pris­on­er to be exe­cut­ed in…

A Florida tri­al court has freed a for­mer death-row pris­on­er after local pros­e­cu­tors said new DNA evi­dence had proven his inno­cence of the rape and mur­der for which he was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death 37 years…

Over the objec­tions of Native American lead­ers across the coun­try, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment on August 26, 2020 exe­cut­ed Lezmond Mitchell (pic­tured), the sole Native-American pris­on­er on fed­er­al death row. Mitchell, a Navajo cit­i­zen, became the first Native American exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for a crime com­mit­ted against a mem­ber of his own tribe on tribal…

As the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment began to car­ry out the sec­ond round of exe­cu­tions it has sched­uled for 2020, autop­sy results from the first round of exe­cu­tions in July sug­gest to a ​“vir­tu­al med­ical cer­tain­ty” that fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers will expe­ri­ence ​“excru­ci­at­ing pain” while they are being put to death by lethal injec­tion with…

Ruling in one of the most sen­sa­tion­al­ized tri­als of the ear­ly 2000s, the California Supreme Court has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Scott Peterson for the mur­ders of his preg­nant wife, Laci, and their unborn son in December 2002. The court upheld Peterson’s con­vic­tions for the two…

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and American Civil Liberties Foundation have filed a law­suit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) seek­ing a court order requir­ing the BOP to dis­close how much the fed­er­al government’s resump­tion of fed­er­al exe­cu­tions is cost­ing tax­pay­ers and what steps the gov­ern­ment has under­tak­en to assess and address the COVID-19 pub­lic health risks cre­at­ed by the exe­cu­tions. ​“As the nation faces both dire pub­lic health and eco­nom­ic crises,”…