Publications & Testimony

NEWS (9/​4/​20) — Ohio: Citing an unwill­ing­ness to endan­ger pub­lic health, Governor Mike DeWine has issued a new set of reprieves that will push back the first three exe­cu­tions sched­uled in Ohio for 2021 until at least 2023. In a news release, the Governor’s office said he issued the reprieves​“due to ongo­ing prob­lems involv­ing the will­ing­ness of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­pli­ers to pro­vide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction … without…

In the clos­ing days of its 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the California leg­is­la­ture passed a trio of racial jus­tice reform bills expect­ed to reduce the influ­ence of racial, eth­nic, and socioe­co­nom­ic bias in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in the state with the country’s…

At a time in which the United States as a whole and indi­vid­ual states and coun­ties have con­tin­ued their long-term move­ment away from the death penal­ty, the fed­er­al government’s cur­rent exe­cu­tion spree has estab­lished it as an out­lier juris­dic­tion out of step with the prac­tices of the nation…

When Truth is All You Have, a new mem­oir by Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey (pic­tured) tells the sto­ry of what many con­sid­er to be the birth of the mod­ern inno­cence move­ment. The book, writ­ten with for­mer USA Today nation­al edi­tor Philip Lerman, and released in July 2020, describes McCloskey’s per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al evo­lu­tion as he cre­at­ed Centurion Ministries in 1983, the first-ever…

The Mississippi Supreme Court has grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Eddie Lee Howard, Jr. (pic­tured), find­ing that the com­bi­na­tion of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid bite-mark evi­dence used to con­vict him and new DNA evi­dence enti­tled him to a new tri­al in the 1992 mur­der and alleged rape of an 84-year-old…

More pris­on­ers in the United States have died in the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic than have been exe­cut­ed in the coun­try in past two decades, new prison data shows, and more California death-row pris­on­ers have been killed by the virus than have been exe­cut­ed in the…

NEWS (8/​28/​20) — The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment exe­cut­ed Keith Nelson on August 28. He was the fifth fed­er­al pris­on­er to be…

A Florida tri­al court has freed a for­mer death-row pris­on­er after local pros­e­cu­tors said new DNA evi­dence had proven his inno­cence of the rape and mur­der for which he was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death…

NEWS (8/​27/​20) — Mississippi: The Mississippi Supreme Court over­turned the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Eddie Lee Howard based on new DNA evi­dence and the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty of bite-mark tes­ti­mo­ny used at Howard’s tri­al. The court’s 8 – 1 deci­sion reversed an ear­li­er deci­sion of the tri­al court that had denied Howard a new tri­al. The appeals court ruled that the evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the tri­al court under­mined the tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny of forensic…

Over the objec­tions of Native American lead­ers across the coun­try, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment on August 26, 2020 exe­cut­ed Lezmond Mitchell (pic­tured), the sole Native-American pris­on­er on fed­er­al death row. Mitchell, a Navajo cit­i­zen, became the first Native American exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for a crime com­mit­ted against a mem­ber of his own tribe…