Publications & Testimony

The death penal­ty is​“a los­ing sit­u­a­tion for every­body,” actress and Clemency star Alfre Woodard said in a recent Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists inter­net forum.​“It does not bring back the per­son who has been tak­en vio­lent­ly. It doesn’t. It…

Long-run­n­ing exe­cu­tion law­suits have set­tled in Arizona and California, as a renewed chal­lenge to the state’s revised lethal-injec­­tion pro­to­col has ramped up in…

In a pri­ma­ry elec­tion that was regard­ed by many as a ref­er­en­dum on reform pros­e­cu­tors, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner (pic­tured) beat back a chal­lenge by the circuit’s for­mer chief homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor, Mary Pat Carl. Election returns from the August 4, 2020, Democratic pri­ma­ry in St. Louis showed Gardner, the city’s first African-American Circuit Attorney, with 61% of the vote, while…

The only woman on Oregon​’s death row has been resen­tenced to life in prison. On August 3, 2020, the Lane County Circuit Court accept­ed a set­tle­ment agree­ment in which Lane County pros­e­cu­tors agreed to drop their appeal of a 2019 rul­ing over­turn­ing the death sen­tence imposed on Angela McAnulty (pic­tured) in February 2011 and McAnulty agreed to drop her appeals of her…

A pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pic­tured) for his role in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ing that killed three peo­ple and injured more…

NEWS (7/​31/​20) — Boston, MA: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. In a 2 – 1 deci­sion, a pan­el of the court ruled that Tsarnaev’s death sen­tence vio­lat­ed the​“core promise of our crim­i­­nal-jus­tice sys­tem … that even the very worst among us deserves to be fair­ly tried and law­ful­ly pun­ished.” The pan­el found that the tri­al judge’s fail­ure to ques­tion 9 of the…

As July 2020 came to a close, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment issued two more notices of exe­cu­tion and a coun­ty judge in Texas report­ed­ly issued a new death war­rant for a death-row pris­on­er whose pre­vi­ous­ly scheduled execution…

A promi­nent South Georgia pros­e­cu­tor, laud­ed for his suc­cess in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions, has a his­to­ry of mis­con­duct in those cas­es, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution inves­tiga­tive report has dis­closed. Longtime Brunswick Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney John B. Johnson III, who joined the five-coun­­ty prosecutor’s office in 1977,​“has a dark lega­cy of prob­lem cas­es,” the paper reports, including repeatedly…

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…

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…