Publications & Testimony

As the December 10, 2020 exe­cu­tion date of fed­er­al death-row pris­on­er Brandon Bernard (pic­tured with his fam­i­ly) approached, jurors and a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor in his case came for­ward say­ing that the teen offender’s life should be spared. Bernard, who was 18 years old at the time of the offense, became the youngest offend­er exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in at…

Saying​“our nation’s long exper­i­ment with the death penal­ty has failed,” a coali­tion of near­ly 100 crim­i­nal jus­tice offi­cials is call­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to halt the five exe­cu­tions cur­rent­ly sched­uled for December 2020 and January 2021 and to end its use of the…

NEWS (12/​4/​20) — Nevada: The Nevada Supreme Court has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Mexican for­eign nation­al Carlos Gutierrez. In a 4 – 3 rul­ing, the court held that Nevada had vio­lat­ed the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations when police and pros­e­cu­tors failed to noti­fy Gutierrez of his rights to con­sular assis­tance by his gov­ern­ment. The court fur­ther held, based upon exten­sive mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence pre­sent­ed with the assis­tance of the…

Defendants of col­or and for­eign nation­als who are intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly like­ly to be sen­tenced to death, a Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of cas­es involv­ing intel­lec­tu­al­ly disabled defendants…

New COVID-19 out­breaks on the nation’s death rows have killed pris­on­ers in Ohio and Missouri and sick­ened at least 11 men on Tennessee​’s…

Saying that the state lacked the abil­i­ty to car­ry out a lethal injec­tion, the South Carolina Supreme Court has stayed the sched­uled December 4, 2020 exe­cu­tion of Richard Moore (pic­tured). With no state exe­cu­tions sched­uled for the remain­der of the year, the stay means that states will car­ry out few­er exe­cu­tions in 2020 than in any…

In two long-await­­ed deci­sions that will alter the land­scape of Florida’s death row, the Florida Supreme Court has lim­it­ed the reach of a land­mark rul­ing that over­turned the state’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against death sen­tences imposed after a non-unan­i­­mous jury vote for death. The court’s January 2020 deci­sion in State v. Poole had raised the specter that the court might rescind orders that had over­turned the death sen­tences of more than 100 Florida…

The range of meth­ods avail­able to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to car­ry out exe­cu­tions could be expand­ed under a new Department of Justice reg­u­la­tion pub­lished on November…

NEWS (11/​26/​20) — Florida: A Santa Rosa County judge has sen­tenced Thomas Fletcher to death for mur­der­ing his cell­mate in a coun­ty prison. Fletcher’s case is emblem­at­ic of recent cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing trends in which death sen­tences have been imposed dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly against defen­dants who waived key procedural…

For the eighth time since 2007, the United Nations General Assembly has adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a glob­al mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The res­o­lu­tion passed on November 17, 2020 by a vote of 120 – 39 with 24 coun­tries abstain­ing. The United States vot­ed against the res­o­lu­tion. The 120 nations sup­port­ing the mea­sure matched the record lev­el of sup­port set in 2018. For the first time, the res­o­lu­tion specif­i­cal­ly iden­ti­fied women among the…