Publications & Testimony

Alabama death-row prisoner Doyle Lee Hamm (pictured), whose botched execution attempt was called off in 2018 after 2½ hours of unsuccessful attempts to set an intravenous execution line, has died on death row. He was 64 years old. Hamm had been suffering from terminal cranial and lymphatic cancer since 2014, which contributed to his death on November 27, 2021, his lawyer, Columbia University Law School Professor Bernard Harcourt, said. Harcourt told Birmingham investigative reporter Beth…

More than 42 years after his wrongful capital murder conviction in June 1979, a Missouri judge has set Kevin Strickland (pictured) free. On November 23, 2021, Judge James Welsh granted a motion filed by Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker under a newly enacted Missouri law allowing local prosecutors to petition for the release of prisoners they believe to be innocent. No physical evidence linked Strickland to the 1978 Kansas City triple murders for which he was convicted; two other men…

The Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, created by the California state legislature to review the state’s criminal laws, has issued a report unanimously recommending that the state repeal its death penalty. The six-member committee’s 39-page Death Penalty Report, released November 17, 2021, also offers intermediate recommendations for reducing the size of California’s nearly 700-person death row — the largest of any state in the country. “After a thorough examination, the Committee has…

After years of seeking to execute Tennessee death-row prisoner Pervis Payne (pictured) for a double-murder he has long insisted he did not commit, the Shelby County District Attorney’s office has conceded that Payne is ineligible for the death penalty. In a motion filed in a Memphis trial court on November 18, 2021, the district attorney’s office withdrew its request for a hearing to contest Payne’s claim that his execution would violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual…

Public support for the death penalty again polled at a half-century low, with opposition remaining at its highest level since May 1966, according to the 2021 Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes about capital punishment. Fifty-four percent of respondents to Gallup’s annual crime survey conducted between October 1 and October 19, 2021 told the polling organization that they were “in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder.” The figure was the lowest since 50% of respondents…

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has granted clemency to death-row prisoner Julius Jones (pictured). In an order announced four hours before his scheduled execution on November 18, 2021, Stitt commuted Jones’ death sentence to life without possibility of parole. Stitt granted the commutation “on the condition that [Jones] shall never again be eligible to apply for, be considered for, or receive any additional commutation, pardon, or parole.” In the months leading up to Stitt’s decision, the…

Nebraska, which had no plans for housing a female death-row prisoner, has narrowly avoided having to address that failure, as a divided three-judge panel on November 8, 2021 sentenced Bailey Boswell to life in prison without possibility of parole. Two members of the panel, Saline County District Judge Vicky Johnson and Lancaster County District Judge Darla Ideus, voted for death. However, Nebraska law requires a unanimous vote for the death penalty to be imposed, and Douglas County District…

Mississippi carried out its first execution in more than nine years on November 17, 2021, putting to death a man with mental health disorders who had waived his appeals. David Neal Cox became at least the 150^th person since executions resumed in the United States in 1977 to drop their appeals and “volunteer” for execution. Executions of volunteers account for 10% of all U.S. executions in that period. In February 2021, a Union County judge ruled that Cox — who pled guilty in 2012 to capital…

Two Japanese death-row prisoners have filed a lawsuit alleging that the country’s long-criticized practice of notifying prisoners of their execution the same day they are to be put to death is “inhumane” and violates the nation’s constitution. The suit, filed in Osaka District Court November 4, 2021, alleges that the day-of-execution notice, given just hours before the death-row prisoner is hanged, provides no time to contact their lawyers to file legal challenges to the execution and is…

In the November 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Daniel Chen, counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, speaks with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham about the Supreme Court case Ramirez v. Collier and death-row prisoners’ rights to religious freedom. John Ramirez has challenged Texas’ restrictions on audible prayer and physical touch by his spiritual advisor during his execution. Allowing such pastoral comfort in the execution chamber, Chen says, is about “fundamental human…