Publications & Testimony

Declaring that “[r]acism still exists and has no place in soci­ety,” the Tennessee Supreme Court on June 25, 2020 direct­ed its Access to Justice Commission (AJC) to cre­ate ​“a new ini­tia­tive to iden­ti­fy and elim­i­nate bar­ri­ers to racial and eth­nic fair­ness and jus­tice.” The court’s pro­nounce­ment, at the height of the racial jus­tice protests that swept the nation fol­low­ing the mur­der of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police offi­cer, was meant to sig­nal its concern about…

As fed­er­al courts in Washington, D.C. and California declined to halt the exe­cu­tion of Lezmond Mitchell, the National Congress of American Indians, thir­teen trib­al gov­ern­ments, and more than 230 mem­bers from more than 90 U.S. tribes joined Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez in ask­ing President Donald Trump to com­mute the death sen­tence of the sole Native American on fed­er­al death row. Native-American commentators also…

In a polit­i­cal maneu­ver that fur­ther inject­ed issues of race, gen­der, and polit­i­cal dis­en­fran­chise­ment into local law enforce­ment pol­i­cy, Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson has asked state law­mak­ers to grant Republican state attor­ney gen­er­al Eric Schmitt author­i­ty to pros­e­cute mur­der cas­es in the city of St. Louis. The pro­pos­al tar­get­ed cas­es that are cur­rent­ly under the exclu­sive purview of Democratic St. Louis City Circuit…

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts has vetoed a bill that would have increased trans­paren­cy in the state’s exe­cu­tion process. LB 238, which passed the state’s uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture on August 13, 2020 by a vote of 27 – 10 with 12 mem­bers present but not vot­ing, would have allowed wit­ness­es to see the exe­cu­tion from the moment the pris­on­er enters the death cham­ber until the pris­on­er is declared dead or the execution is…

In a rul­ing imbued with his­toric sig­nif­i­cance, the North Carolina Supreme Court has for the first time acknowl­edged per­va­sive dis­crim­i­na­tion in the state’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and vacat­ed a death-row prisoner’s death sen­tence under the since-repealed Racial Justice Act…

Legislators in an August 13, 2020 vir­tu­al forum on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment say that the eco­nom­ic impact of the coro­n­avirus on state bud­gets adds to their con­cerns about the via­bil­i­ty and desir­abil­i­ty of the death penal­ty as a social…

Attorney General William Barr has promised vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers that, in exchange for infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to bring two British ISIS detainees believed respon­si­ble for the mur­ders of four Americans, two British aid work­ers, and more than twen­ty oth­ers to tri­al in the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) will not seek the death penalty against…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has released The State of Criminal Justice 2020, its annu­al report on issues, trends, and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The ABA book includes a chap­ter on sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment devel­op­ments over the past year, authored by Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice. Tabak’s analysis…

The slow but steady ero­sion of U.S. death row con­tin­ued in the first quar­ter of 2020, data from the lat­est quar­ter­ly death-row cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) has revealed. The Spring 2020 edi­tion of Death Row USA (DRUSA), released August 10, reports that 2,603 peo­ple were on death row or fac­ing resen­tenc­ing as of April 1, 2020. That marked a decline of 17 since the January 1, 2020 report and a 2.6% drop from the 2,673 LDF reported for…