Publications & Testimony

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…

An Idaho trial court judge has resentenced Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. to life without parole, ruling that Governor Brad Little lacked legal authority to reject the state Commission of Pardons and Parole’s recommendation of clemency for the 65-year-old terminally ill death-row prisoner. In a nineteen-page decision, issued February 4, 2022, Second Judicial District Court Judge Jay Gaskill held that the Idaho state constitution vests exclusive power over commutation decisions in the Commission of…

The state of Texas has issued a death warrant seeking to execute Melissa Lucio (pictured), a battered woman who was sentenced to death for what may have been an accidental fall that killed her two-year-old daughter. She is scheduled to be executed April 27, 2022. In an interview with the Texas Observer, Tivon Schardl, a lawyer on Lucio’s appellate defense team, called her case “as clear a case of injustice as you’ll ever see.” “Melissa Lucio faces imminent execution for a capital murder that…

Likely voters in Clark County, Nevada overwhelmingly oppose the use of capital punishment against broad categories of vulnerable and impaired persons whom county prosecutors have been trying to execute, a new poll released by Vegas Watch on January 27, 2022 shows. The poll, conducted by the Justice Research Group from December 1 to 13, 2021, found a significant disconnect between voters’ views on capital punishment and the practices of Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson (pictured).

A Memphis judge has resentenced Pervis Payne to two concurrent life sentences, making the former Tennessee death-row prisoner who has long maintained his innocence eligible to apply for parole in five years. The sentencing order, issued by Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan on January 31, 2022, follows decades of litigation over whether Payne, who is intellectually disabled, was even subject to the death penalty. County prosecutors fought to execute Payne for more than three…

California’s death row — the largest in the country — will be dismantled within two years, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on January 31, 2022. Under Newsom’s plan, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) will transfer the men on death row in San Quentin State Prison to other maximum security state prisons. San Quentin’s death row will be repurposed and transformed “into something innovative and anchored in rehabilitation,” corrections’ spokeswoman Vicky Waters told…

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (pictured), whose growing doubts about capital punishment led him to question its constitutionality, is retiring after 28 years on the Court. The 83-year-old justice formally announced his retirement in a January 27, 2022 letter to President Joe Biden, saying that he will step down “when the Court rises for the summer recess this year … assuming that by then my successor has been nominated and confirmed.” Biden said the same day that he intends to…