Publications & Testimony

A second Ohio death-row prisoner has been resentenced to life without parole under a new state law that makes individuals who were seriously mentally ill at the time of their crime ineligible for the death penalty. Donald Ketterer, who was sentenced to death in Butler County in February 2004, was transferred from death row in Ohio’s Chillicothe Correctional Institution on October 6, 2021 to a state prison in Warren County after a Butler County Court of Common Pleas ruling in September that…

Alabama has executed an intellectually disabled death-row prisoner who was sentenced to death by his trial judge despite a non-unanimous sentencing recommendation by his jury. Willie B. Smith III was executed by three-drug lethal injection on October 21, 2021 after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his appeal of a lower federal court ruling denying his claim that the state’s choice to execute him by lethal injection violated his rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act. Smith…

A St. Louis Circuit Court judge has denied St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner’s (pictured) July 2021 request for special prosecutors to handle three death-eligible homicide cases in her jurisdiction. On October 15, 2021, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Hogan wrote that the conflicts cited by Gardner’s office in its request for a special prosecutor were not “disqualifying” and therefore that “the Court has no authority to appoint a special prosecutor.” Gardner was elected in 2016 and…

Alleging that Shelby County Assistant District Attorney General Stephen Jones may have been representing the prosecution in his case while simultaneously serving as a capital case staff attorney assisting the county’s judges, Tennessee death-row prisoner Pervis Payne (pictured) has moved to disqualify the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office from further participation in his case. Payne is awaiting a scheduled December 13, 2021 court hearing to determine whether he is ineligible for…

An intellectually disabled Alabama death-row prisoner has appealed a federal district court ruling that clears the way for his execution on October 21, 2021. On October 17, a federal district court judge denied for a second time Willie B. Smith III’s claim that putting him to death by lethal injection violates his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Lawyers for Smith (pictured) on October 19, 2021 filed a motion in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to stay…

The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld the state’s execution process against a procedural challenge by two of the state’s death-row prisoners that sought to invalidate Ohio’s lethal-injection protocol. A unanimous Ohio Supreme Court ruled on October 19, 2021 that the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) did not violate state law when it adopted a lethal-injection protocol without going through the state’s formal rulemaking process. In their suit, death-row prisoners Cleveland…

In a decision with potential to vacate a number of Oklahoma execution dates, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has held that a lower federal court abused its discretion in dismissing six death-row prisoners from a lawsuit challenging the state’s execution protocol. The appeals court decision, issued on October 15, 2021, said that a ruling by Judge Stephen Friot of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma that six death-row prisoners who had not designated an…

Death-row exoneree Robert DuBoise (pictured) is suing the City of Tampa, four Tampa police officers, and the forensic odontologist who falsely testified against him, alleging that they fabricated evidence that led to his wrongful conviction and death sentence. DuBoise was exonerated in August 2020 after a Conviction Integrity Unit reviewed his case and new DNA evidence excluded him as the perpetrator of the rape and murder for which he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death 37 years…

A United States Supreme Court sharply divided along ideological lines heard oral argument October 13, 2021 on the Department of Justice’s appeal of a federal circuit court’s ruling overturning the death sentences imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his convictions in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Veteran court watchers reported that the six conservative justices seemed poised to overturn the federal appeal court’s grant of a new penalty phase hearing to Tsarnaev and to return the case to the…

A Texas judge has recommended that the conviction and death sentence of death-row prisoner Randy Halprin (pictured), who is Jewish, be overturned because of the religious bigotry of the judge presiding over his trial. In a statement of findings released on October 11, 2021, Dallas Criminal District Court Judge Lela Mays wrote that “Judge Vickers Cunningham possessed anti-Semitic prejudice against Halprin which violated Halprin’s constitutional right to a trial in a fair tribunal, equal…