Publications & Testimony

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…

Expressing con­cerns about wrong­ful con­vic­tions, racial­ly dis­parate impact, and arbi­trari­ness, Attorney General nom­i­nee Merrick Garland (pic­tured) told the Senate Judiciary Committee dur­ing his con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing on February 22, 2021 that the death penal­ty has giv­en him​“great pause.” Garland said that he​“expect[s] that the President will be giv­ing direc­tion” on the fed­er­al death-penal­­ty pol­i­cy, and that it was​“not at all unlike­ly” that the…

Death-penal­­ty repeal leg­is­la­tion in Virginia will move to Governor Ralph Northam’s desk, after both hous­es approved the bill passed ear­li­er in the ses­sion in the oppo­site cham­ber. Virginia’s leg­isla­tive rules required the House of Delegates to pass the Senate bill or vice ver­sa, even though the bill text was iden­ti­cal. Governor Northam has pledged to sign the bill, which will make Virginia the 23^rd state, and the first in the South, to abolish…

NEWS (2/​16/​21) — Pennsylvania: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has rein­stat­ed death-row exoneree Roderick Johnson’s law­suit seek­ing dam­ages for his place­ment in soli­tary con­fine­ment for almost twen­ty years. Johnson was sen­tenced to death in 1998 in Berks County, Pennsylvania. He was not released from soli­tary confinement on…

A bipar­ti­san group of leg­is­la­tors has announced the intro­duc­tion of a bill to repeal Ohio’s death penal­ty. In a vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence on February 18, 2021, four Republican and four Democratic leg­is­la­tors spoke about the lat­est effort to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the…

The United States has entered the longest peri­od in 40 years with­out any state car­ry­ing out an exe­cu­tion, an analy­sis of data in the Death Penalty Information Center execution database…

For the first time in its his­to­ry, National Geographic mag­a­zine has tack­led the sub­ject of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Sentenced to death, but inno­cent, a fea­ture sto­ry in the March 2021 issue of the mag­a­zine, chron­i­cles the sto­ries of fif­teen death-row exonerees and illu­mi­nates the per­va­sive issue of inno­cence and the death penal­ty in the United States. The arti­cle, released on the same day as the Death Penalty Information Center’s new…