Publications & Testimony

When Oklahoma executed Gilbert Postelle on February 17, 2022, it came with a dubious distinction. The intellectually impaired man who was 18 years old at the time of his offense became the 44^th person prosecuted in Oklahoma County to be put to death since executions resumed in the U.S. in 1977. His death made the county the nation’s third-most prolific county executioner over the past half-century, tied with Tarrant and Bexar counties in Texas. (Click to enlarge graphic.) Postelle was the…

A high-profile Republican-led effort to abolish the death penalty in Utah has failed in committee by a single vote. State representatives in the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee voted 6 – 5 on February 14, 2022 not to advance a proposal that would repeal Utah’s death penalty and replace it with a new non-capital sentencing alternative of 45 years to life. The bill, HB 147, was introduced in the deeply conservative state by Republican lawmakers Representative V. Lowry Snow and…

Nevada prosecutors have failed to meet a deadline to obtain a death warrant to execute Zane Floyd before its supply of a key lethal-injection drug expires, indefinitely extending the near 16-year pause between executions in the state. With Nevada law requiring two-week notice of an execution, Clark County prosecutors had until February 13, 2022, to obtain a warrant if they were to attempt to execute Floyd before the state’s supply of 50 ketamine vials expires on February 28. They did not do…

In what one analyst described as “an important step to restore the rule of law,” the U.S. Department of Justice has pledged not to use statements obtained by torture in its Guantánamo Military Commissions prosecution of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Al-Nashiri. Al-Nashiri is accused of masterminding the Al Qaeda suicide bombing of the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors in October 2000. The U.S. government is seeking the death penalty against him. In a brief filed January 31, 2022, the Department…

Autopsy results for an Oklahoma death-row prisoner whose execution state officials claimed “was carried out … without complication” have confirmed eyewitness reports that John Grant likely suffered a torturous death. The autopsy, conducted by Tulsa Medical Examiner Jeremy Shelton, M.D., the morning after Grant was executed on October 28, 2021, revealed that Grant suffered pulmonary edema and intramuscular hemorrhaging, and aspirated on his vomit as a result of the lethal injection. The autopsy…

A federal district court has overturned the death sentence of an Alabama death-row prisoner whose abandonment by his state post-conviction counsel led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the right of access to federal habeas corpus review. On January 27, 2022, Judge Karon O. Bowdre of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama overturned Cory Maples’ death sentence, holding that his trial counsel had provided prejudicially deficient representation during the penalty…

At least three Nevada execution personnel backed out of participating in Zane Floyd’s (pictured, right) execution after a U.S. district judge asked about their education and training. The personnel, including a doctor and two emergency medical technicians, declined to participate after U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II asked the state to provide him with their credential information. Another doctor was excluded by the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) after the agency learned of…

Oklahoma is paying $15,000 per execution, plus $1,000 for each day of training, to an unnamed doctor to participate in the process of putting state prisoners to death. Under the agreement, the doctor stood to receive an estimated $130,000 over the course of the 19-week-period between October 28, 2021 and March 10, 2022 in which the state had scheduled the executions of seven prisoners. The payments were disclosed by Oklahoma prison officials during federal court hearings in January 2022 on…

The number of people sentenced to death or facing continuing jeopardy of execution in pending capital retrial or resentencing proceedings continued its more than two-decade decline in the third quarter of 2021, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) Fall 2021 quarterly census of death rows across the United States. In its Fall 2021 edition of Death Row USA (DRUSA), released February 7, 2022, LDF reported that the number of people on state, federal, or military death…

Children of family members who have been sentenced to death or executed are among the most hidden trauma victims of capital punishment. To help address their unique mental health needs, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), an organization dedicated “to rais[ing] the standard of care and improv[ing] access to services for traumatized children, their families and communities throughout the United States,” has released a new treatment resource that offers guidance to professionals…