Publications & Testimony

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment con­duct­ed its sixth and sev­enth exe­cu­tions in ten weeks on September 22 and 24, putting William Emmett LeCroy (pic­tured) and Christopher Vialva to death amid con­tin­u­ing chal­lenges to the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and to car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. As the fed­er­al appeal courts set aside LeCroy’s exe­cu­tion chal­lenges, Vialva’s law­suit chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col remained pending in…

Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act show that the fed­er­al government’s choice to bring hun­dreds of peo­ple to the fed­er­al prison com­plex in Terre Haute, Indiana to car­ry out five exe­cu­tions in July and August in the midst of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic like­ly caused a COVID-19 out­break that has already killed three and hospitalized…

A study of 40 years of Texas death sen­tences has found that the like­li­hood that a defen­dant accused of a death-eli­gi­ble mur­der will be sen­tenced to death is three times greater if the case involves a white female…

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died. The 87-year-old jus­tice, who repeat­ed­ly expressed skep­ti­cism about the death penal­ty but nev­er took the step of say­ing it was inher­ent­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, suc­cumbed to pan­cre­at­ic can­cer on September 18, 2020. Her death imme­di­ate­ly threw the future direc­tion of the Court into…

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment intends to exe­cute Christopher Vialva (pic­tured) on September 24, 2020, the first time in near­ly 70 years it will have put any teenage offend­er to death. But accord­ing to a promi­nent cog­ni­tive neu­ropsy­chol­o­gist, the deci­sion to exe­cute Vialva is out of step with what sci­ence now knows about the work­ings of the adolescent…

A Florida man and an Arkansas woman, con­vict­ed of mur­der in sep­a­rate cas­es involv­ing junk sci­ence and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, have been exon­er­at­ed, decades after being wrongfully capitally…

NEWS (9/​15/​20) — Texas: A Bexar County tri­al court judge has issued an order with­draw­ing the death war­rant that had sched­uled Carlos Trevino’s exe­cu­tion for September 30, 2020. The court cit­ed ​“the cur­rent COVID-19 con­di­tions in Texas” as the grounds for postponement.

As the 2020 National Football League (NFL) season’s open­ing week­end began on Sunday, September 13, end zones were paint­ed with the words ​“End Racism” and ​“It Takes All of Us.” Six NFL teams remained in lock­er rooms for the National Anthem, and play­ers and one coach kneeled. After hav­ing been accused of black­balling play­ers who peace­ful­ly demon­strat­ed dur­ing the nation­al anthem, the NFL stat­ed in ear­ly September that “[t]he league is com­mit­ted to inte­grat­ing important causes…

The Death Penalty Information Center has released a major new report on race and the U.S. death penal­ty, pro­vid­ing an in-depth look at the his­tor­i­cal role race has played in the death penal­ty and detail­ing the per­va­sive impact racial dis­crim­i­na­tion con­tin­ues to have through­out every stage of a death penal­ty case today. Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty. released on September 15, 2020, also makes the case for why…