Publications & Testimony

A Jewish congregation whose members were among the eleven people killed by a white supremacist in an attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018 has renewed its request for the Department of Justice to drop the death penalty against the accused gunman. In a June 24, 2021 letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Bruce Herschlag, the President of Congregation Dor Hadash, urged the Justice Department to “abandon its quest for the death penalty” against Robert Bowers, who…

“The more people know about how the system of capital punishment really works, the less support they will have for that policy,” says Marc Bookman, the author of A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays. Bookman’s critically acclaimed collection of essays — described by Publishers Weekly as “a cogent and harrowing primer on what’s wrong with capital punishment” — channels his decades of capital litigation experience into 12 stories that exemplify the systemic failings of the…

A survey of 500 registered voters in Oklahoma, conducted June 24 – 28, 2021 by the Oklahoma polling firm Amber Integrated, has found that 60% of those who said they knew anything about the case of death-row prisoner Julius Jones believe Oklahoma authorities should commute his death sentence. The poll results are virtually identical to those in an Amber Integrated public affairs survey conducted from December 14 – 17, 2020, except that a significantly larger percentage of Oklahomans are now aware of…

In a memorandum that left to Congress the task of addressing systemic questions of arbitrariness, racial discrimination, and wrongful convictions affecting the administration of the federal death penalty, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland (pictured) issued a directive formally pausing federal executions while the Department of Justice (DOJ) undertakes a review of executive branch policies adopted in the last two years of the Trump administration. Garland’s memorandum, issued late in the…

The first half of 2021 spotlighted two continuing death-penalty trends in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2021 Mid-Year Review. On one hand, the continuing erosion of capital punishment in law and practice across the country; on the other hand, the extreme and often lawless conduct of the few jurisdictions that have attempted to carry out executions this year. The year began with three executions that concluded the Trump administration’s unparalleled spree…

Texas executed John Hummel on June 30, 2021, an honorably discharged former Marine with service-related trauma whose trial lawyer now works for the prosecutor who was trying to execute him. Hummel had come within two days of execution in March 2020, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a stay because of health concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2021, Hummel’s lawyer, Michael Mowla, indicated that no appeals would be filed to try to halt the execution. Hummel was…

Wiley Bridgeman (pictured, left), who spent 39 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, died June 27, 2021, after a long illness. Bridgeman was 66. In 1975, Bridgeman was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death alongside his brother, Kwame Ajamu (pictured, right), and their friend, Ricky Jackson. Bridgeman once came within three weeks of execution before Ohio’s death-penalty law was declared unconstitutional in 1978. The three men were exonerated in 2014, when a witness who had…

For the second time in three years, the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC) and the state of Nevada are facing legal action from a pharmaceutical manufacturer after obtaining drugs for an execution in violation of the drug manufacturer’s policies. Hikma Phamaceuticals, a maker of the anesthetic ketamine, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford on June 24, 2021, threatening to sue the state for illegally obtaining ketamine for the execution of Zane Floyd, unless…

Three quarters of Dallas, Texas voters say they prefer some version of life imprisonment over the death penalty for people convicted of first-degree murder, a new poll has found. The poll, which was conducted on June 16 – 17, 2021 by the independent polling firm, Public Policy Polling (PPP), found broad support for sweeping changes in death-penalty policy in a county that is responsible for the second most executions in the United States since capital punishment resumed in the 1970s. By wide…

NEWS (6/25/21) — Alabama: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has affirmed an Alabama federal district court decision dismissing James Barber’s habeas corpus challenge to his conviction and death sentence. In an unsigned, unpublished opinion, the appeals court denied Barber’s claim that his lawyers provided ineffective representation in the penalty phase of his capital trial by failing to investigate and present mitigating evidence to the jury. NEWS (6/23 – 24/21) — Florida…