Publications & Testimony

The North Carolina Supreme Court has ordered that three African American death-row pris­on­ers who had proven that their death sen­tences vio­lat­ed the state’s since repealed Racial Justice Act (RJA) must be resen­tenced to life impris­on­ment with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. In three deci­sions issued on September 25, 2020, the court ruled that North Carolina had vio­lat­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples of dou­ble jeop­ardy and the prohibitions…

NEWS (9/​24/​20) — Ohio: The Ohio Supreme Court has upheld the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Terry Lee Froman for a September 2014 dou­ble mur­der in Warren County. Among oth­er issues, the court ruled that Froman’s due process rights were not vio­lat­ed when he was forced to wear leg shack­les through­out the tri­al. The court not­ed that while shack­ling is gen­er­al­ly inap­pro­pri­ate, the tri­al court had made an individualized…

A new National Public Radio (NPR) analy­sis of more than 200 autop­sies of death-row pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion has found that 84% of those exe­cut­ed showed evi­dence of pul­monary ede­ma, a con­di­tion in which a person’s lungs fill with flu­id that cre­ates the feel­ing of suf­fo­ca­tion or drown­ing that experts have likened to…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has denied habeas cor­pus relief to three Georgia death-row pris­on­ers in a series of opin­ions that nar­row­ly inter­pret­ed the scope of a defendant’s right to effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the penal­ty phase of a cap­i­tal tri­al. The deci­sions, issued in unre­lat­ed cas­es over the course of 36 hours on September 15 and 16, 2020, absolved court-appoint­ed coun­sel of sig­nif­i­cant failures in…

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…

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…

NEWS (9/​17/​20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court has denied post-con­vic­­tion relief to Ken Lott, retroac­tive­ly apply­ing its new rule that a death sen­tence imposed under the state’s uncon­sti­tu­tion­al judi­cial fact-find­­ing statute did not vio­late Lott’s right to a jury tri­al because the jury had unan­i­mous­ly found an aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance. The court held that Lott’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury tri­al in his…

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…

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…

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…