Publications & Testimony

Efforts to end the death penalty in Utah edged forward on September 8, 2021 as two Republican legislators revealed plans to introduce legislation to “repeal and replace” the state’s capital punishment law and the prosecuting attorney in the state’s second most populous county declared that he would no longer seek the death penalty in future cases. After what they describe as having “spiritually contemplated the issue,” former death-penalty supporters State Representative Lowry Snow (R – St.

Texas death-row prisoner John Ramirez (pictured) is asking the United States Supreme Court to stay his September 8, 2021 execution, arguing that the state’s refusal to allow his pastor to pray out loud with him and lay hands on him while he is being executed violates federal law and his First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. In a petition for writ of certiorari and application for stay of execution filed in the high court September 7, counsel for Ramirez appealed to the Court to…

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has posthumously pardoned seven young Black men who were sentenced to death by all-white juries and executed in Virginia seven decades ago on charges of raping a white woman. Following years of advocacy from family members and other advocates who pushed for gubernatorial action, Northam announced the posthumous pardons on August 31, 2021, surprising the family members and advocates who had come to the capitol expecting to personally meet with the governor to…

Despite the pendency of a trial on the constitutionality of the state’s lethal-injection protocol, newly appointed Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set execution dates for seven prisoners on the state’s death row. If the court approves the execution dates, they would be Oklahoma’s first attempt to carry out executions in more than six years, ending a hiatus brought on by a series of botched executions. On August 26, 2021, O’Connor…

A group of 8^th graders from North Andover Middle School in North Andover, Massachusetts are championing efforts to posthumously pardon a young woman who was sentenced to death for witchcraft in 1693 during the height of the Salem witchcraft hysteria. The students in Carrie LaPierre’s civics class spent a year researching the case of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who they discovered was the only remaining person wrongfully convicted of witchcraft in the colony who had not been exonerated. They…

A California trial court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative media commentator John V. Lacy that had challenged the constitutionality of the March 2019 executive order by Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured) declaring a moratorium on executions in the state. In orders issued on August 31, 2021, the Sacramento Superior Court denied Lacy’s motion to strike down Newsom’s moratorium for allegedly exceeding his authority under the California constitution and granted Newsom’s motion to dismiss…

The number of people on death row or facing possible capital resentencing in the United States has fallen to its lowest level in nearly three decades, according to a DPIC analysis of the latest death-row data compiled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). LDF’s Winter 2021 edition of its quarterly Death Row USA (DRUSA) census, released on August 31, 2021, reports that 2,528 people were imprisoned on state, federal, or military death rows in the United States as of January 1…

In the third episode of the Discussions with DPIC podcast’s Rethinking Public Safety series, Miriam Krinsky (pictured) speaks with DPIC Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue about her experiences as a former federal prosecutor and the Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), a network of elected prosecutors devoted to promoting fairness, equity, compassion, and fiscal responsibility in the criminal legal system. Krinsky and Ndulue explore a range of issues…

Three members of the jury who voted to convict and sentence Toforest Johnson (pictured, center) to death in his capital trial in Birmingham in 1998 are now urging Alabama’s courts to grant him a new trial. Having learned of significant prosecutorial misconduct during Johnson’s trial for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy, including the revelation that a key witness lied to collect reward money, Jay Crane, Matthew Young, and Monique Hicks all say that Johnson’s conviction should be overturned. “I…

The California Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of a death-row prisoner who was permitted to waive counsel and represent himself despite a mental health expert’s finding that he was too mentally ill even to stand trial. On August 23, 2021, the appeals court granted a new trial to Edward M. Wycoff in the 2006 murders of his sister and brother-in-law. In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Martin Jenkins (pictured), the court held that Wycoff’s trial was unconstitutionally tainted…