Publications & Testimony

The U.S. gov­ern­ment has set an August 26, 2020 exe­cu­tion date for the sole Native American on fed­er­al death row, against the wish­es of his tribe, the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly, and the local U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted the…

Recent police and vig­i­lante killings of Black Americans have ignit­ed a nation­al call for sys­temic reform of law enforce­ment across the coun­try, high­light­ing the link between extra­ju­di­cial abuse of force and wide­spread dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of unnec­es­sar­i­ly harsh legal pun­ish­ments against peo­ple of col­or. In the wake of these mur­ders, Maryland pub­lic defend­er Kristina Leslie (pic­tured) writes, “[m]eaningful and equi­table crim­i­nal jus­tice reform … must include abolishing…

Nebraska may have exe­cut­ed Carey Dean Moore in August 2018 using drugs sup­plied by a phar­ma­cy in vio­la­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers’ dis­tri­b­u­tion poli­cies, Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) records…

When Attorney General William Barr announced in July 2019 that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment planned to resume fed­er­al exe­cu­tions by putting to death Daniel Lewis Lee, the Department of Justice press release announc­ing the death war­rants trum­pet­ed that ​“we owe it to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies to car­ry for­ward the sen­tence imposed by our jus­tice sys­tem.” But the fam­i­ly of Nancy Mueller (pic­tured) and her eight-year-old daugh­ter Sarah Powell —…

The Innocence Project and fed­er­al defend­ers have filed a motion in a Shelby County, Tennessee tri­al court seek­ing DNA test­ing of phys­i­cal evi­dence hid­den by pros­e­cu­tors for 30 years that they believe will exon­er­ate death-row pris­on­er Pervis Payne (pic­tured). Payne, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on December 3, 2020, has stead­fast­ly denied com­mit­ting the crime. The lawyers argue that his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence are the com­bined prod­uct of racial bias by…

After four unsuc­cess­ful attempts to impose the death penal­ty over the past decade and what he described as a trans­for­ma­tive vis­it to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, Santa Clara County, California District Attorney Jeff Rosen (pic­tured) has announced that his office will no longer seek the death…

Derrick Jamison sur­vived six death war­rants dur­ing his two decades on Ohio​’s death row, com­ing with­in 90 min­utes of being exe­cut­ed. After he was exon­er­at­ed, on the day he walked free, his best friend on death row was exe­cut­ed. His sto­ry, he writes in a July 11, 2020 op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times, ​“illus­trates every­thing that is wrong with the death penal­ty” and why it should be…

Calling cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment a ​“lux­u­ry” that the state can no longer afford, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon (pic­tured) told leg­is­la­tors that he is ​“very seri­ous­ly” con­sid­er­ing impos­ing a mora­to­ri­um on the state’s rarely-used death…

In the lat­est episode of Discussions With DPIC, David Fathi, the direc­tor of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, speaks with DPIC’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger about death-row con­di­tions across the coun­try. Fathi speaks about the ​“shat­ter­ing” effects of long-term death-row soli­tary con­fine­ment, the move­ment away from auto­mat­ic soli­tary con­fine­ment for death row pris­on­ers, and the impact of COVID-19 in con­gre­gate-liv­ing cir­cum­stances, such as…