Publications & Testimony

“What should become of individuals who are awaiting execution following the repeal or judicial invalidation of capital punishment legislation?,” ask authors James R. Acker (pictured, left) and Brian W. Stull (pictured, right) in a recent article published in the Akron Law Review. If history is a guide, they say, the prisoners’ lives should be spared. Acker is an emeritus distinguished teaching professor in the University of Albany’s School of Criminal Justice and Stull is a senior staff…

At the request of Cameron County prosecutors, a Texas trial court has vacated the death warrant that had scheduled the execution of Ruben Gutierrez (pictured) for October 27, 2021. In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed Gutierrez’s execution after Texas refused to allow his spiritual advisor to accompany him in the execution chamber and directed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, where Gutierrez had filed a civil rights suit alleging religious discrimination, to…

NEWS (9/16/21) – Nevada: The Supreme Court of Nevada has overturned Samuel Howard’s death sentence, finding him “actually innocent” of the death penalty. Reversing the trial court’s dismissal of Howard’s postconviction challenge to his death sentence, the appeals court ruled that a recent decision by New York state courts that overturned a conviction prosecutors relied upon as an aggravating circumstance in Howard’s case invalidated that aggravating circumstance. The Nevada Supreme Court had…

Four Utah district attorneys, representing counties that comprise 57.5% of the state’s population, have urged the state legislature and Utah Governor Spencer Cox to enact legislation to repeal and replace Utah’s death penalty. In an open letter to Cox and the legislature released September 14, 2021, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, Grand County Attorney Christina Sloan, Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson, and Utah County Attorney David Leavitt — two Republicans and two Democrats…

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has voted to recommend that Governor Kevin Stitt commute the death sentence imposed on Julius Jones (pictured) by an Oklahoma County jury in 1999 to a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. After a three-hour hearing on September 13, 2021 that featured testimony from prosecutors, defense attorneys, and family members of murder victim Paul Howell, the board voted 3 – 1 in favor of commutation, with one member, Scott Williams, recusing…

Former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured), who was exonerated in 2020, is suing the officials whose misconduct led to his arrest and repeated wrongful conviction. Flowers was tried six times and spent 23 years wrongfully incarcerated for a quadruple murder in a white-owned furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. In a complaint filed September 3, 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Flowers alleges that his trial prosecutor, an…

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pictured) has issued reprieves further postponing four executions that had been scheduled between January and May 2022. The governor’s orders, announced September 10, 2021, rescheduled the executions for between December 2024 and May 2025. DeWine granted reprieves to death-row prisoners Warren K. Henness, Stanley T. Adams, John E. Drummond, and James G. Hanna. A news release announcing the reprieves, said “Governor DeWine is issuing these reprieves due to ongoing…

The number of people on death row or facing possible capital resentencing across the United States now matches a three-decade low, according to data compiled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and analyzed by the Death Penalty Information Center. The Spring 2021 edition of LDF’s Death Row USA (DRUSA), the organization’s quarterly death-row census, reports that 2,504 people were imprisoned on state, federal, or military death rows in the United States or still faced jeopardy…

The California Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death-penalty statute against a constitutional challenge that had the potential to overturn the sentences of hundreds of people on California’s death row. In a unanimous ruling issued August 26, 2021 in People v. McDaniel, the court held that a capital jury need not unanimously agree to the existence of an aggravating circumstance before weighing it in the sentencing decision so long as every juror found that the prosecution had proven at…

In an after-hours order issued on September 8, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court halted Texas’s planned execution of John Henry Ramirez and agreed to review his claim that the state’s refusal to allow his pastor to “lay hands” on him or pray audibly during the execution violated federal law and his First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. The order, released shortly after 9:45 p.m. Eastern time — nearly three hours after Ramirez’s execution was scheduled to begin — directed the…