Publications & Testimony

NEWS (8/​14/​20) — Alabama: The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has affirmed a low­er court rul­ing grant­i­ng a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Steven Petric based upon his lawyer’s inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion at tri­al. Petric had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2009 for a rape and mur­der in sub­ur­ban Birmingham two…

Legislators in an August 13, 2020 vir­tu­al forum on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment say that the eco­nom­ic impact of the coro­n­avirus on state bud­gets adds to their con­cerns about the via­bil­i­ty and desir­abil­i­ty of the death penal­ty as a social…

Attorney General William Barr has promised vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers that, in exchange for infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary to bring two British ISIS detainees believed respon­si­ble for the mur­ders of four Americans, two British aid work­ers, and more than twen­ty oth­ers to tri­al in the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) will not seek the death…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has released The State of Criminal Justice 2020, its annu­al report on issues, trends, and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The ABA book includes a chap­ter on sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment devel­op­ments over the past year, authored by Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice.

The slow but steady ero­sion of U.S. death row con­tin­ued in the first quar­ter of 2020, data from the lat­est quar­ter­ly death-row cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) has revealed. The Spring 2020 edi­tion of Death Row USA (DRUSA), released August 10, reports that 2,603 peo­ple were on death row or fac­ing resen­tenc­ing as of April 1, 2020. That marked a decline of 17 since the January 1, 2020 report and a 2.6% drop from the 2,673 LDF…

After 12 years as Orleans Parish, Louisiana District Attorney, Leon Cannizzaro (pic­tured) has announced that he will not seek re-elec­­tion and will be retir­ing as D.A. at the end of this term. Cannizzaro’s tenure in office was marked by his aggres­sive defense of pri­or offi­cial mis­con­duct in cap­i­tal cas­es, mis­con­duct by his office while he was District Attorney, and rev­e­la­tions that Orleans Parish pros­e­cu­tors had rou­tine­ly issued fake sub­poe­nas and threatened…

NEWS (8/​6/​20) — Connecticut: The Connecticut Supreme Court grant­ed a new tri­al to for­mer death-row pris­on­er Lazale Ashby. The court ruled that the pros­e­cu­tion had vio­lat­ed Ashby’s Sixth Amendment right to coun­sel​“by using a jail­house infor­mant … to delib­er­ate­ly elic­it cer­tain incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments from the defen­dant.” The court said that the infor­mant, who had a past his­to­ry of pro­vid­ing assis­tance to pros­e­cu­tors, had been act­ing as an…

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…