Publications & Testimony

In a major vic­to­ry for media out­lets and pris­on­er advo­cates, the Nebraska Supreme Court has ordered the state’s Department of Correctional Services (DCS) to release pub­lic records relat­ed to the pro­cure­ment of drugs used in the 2018 exe­cu­tion of Carey Dean Moore (pic­tured). The court reject­ed the state’s argu­ment that drug sup­pli­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers are mem­bers of the exe­cu­tion team whose iden­ti­ties may be shield­ed from dis­clo­sure but per­mit­ted DCS to redact…

The Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) has announced that it will close the state’s death row and inte­grate most of its cap­i­tal­ly sen­tenced pris­on­ers into the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion. The move reflects the con­tin­u­ing decline of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Oregon and fol­lows a nation­wide trend of remov­ing death-row pris­on­ers from automatic solitary…

For the sec­ond time in less than four months, the Florida Supreme Court has changed state law to uphold a death-row prisoner’s con­vic­tion or death sen­tence and dimin­ish the legal pro­tec­tions avail­able to oth­er indi­vid­u­als con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal offens­es. In an unsigned May 14, 2020 rul­ing uphold­ing the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Sean Bush, the court abro­gat­ed a cen­tu­ry-old legal stan­dard gov­ern­ing cas­es in which a con­vic­tion is based sole­ly on circumstantial…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has vacat­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion for Missouri death-row pris­on­er Walter Barton (pic­tured) who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on Tuesday, May 19, 2020. The court’s unsigned opin­ion, issued on Sunday, May 17, lift­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion that had been issued May 15 by a fed­er­al dis­trict court judge. The dis­trict court said a stay was nec­es­sary to afford it time to address a peti­tion Barton had filed that challenged his…

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has found that a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor now serv­ing as a jus­tice on the Arkansas Supreme Court delib­er­ate­ly destroyed excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in a case in which he had sought the death penal­ty. On April 29, 2020, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the fed­er­al appeals court affirmed the rul­ings of a fed­er­al dis­trict court over­turn­ing the con­vic­tions of life-sen­tenced pris­on­ers Tina Jimerson and John…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has upheld the rul­ing of a Dallas tri­al court that denied a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Charles Flores (pic­tured), whose con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were the prod­uct of hyp­not­i­cal­ly assist­ed tes­ti­mo­ny. The TCCA said its deci­sion was “[b]ased upon the tri­al court’s find­ings and con­clu­sions,” which the appeals court acknowl­edged had sim­ply ​“adopt­ed the State’s pro­posed find­ings of fact and conclusions of…

The city of Cleveland will pay a record $18 mil­lion dol­lars to set­tle a civ­il rights law­suit by three for­mer death-row pris­on­ers who, as a result of police mis­con­duct, spent more than a com­bined 80 years impris­oned for a mur­der they did not com­mit. Kwame Ajamu (pic­tured, left), his broth­er Wiley Bridgeman (pic­tured, cen­ter), and Rickey Jackson (pic­tured, right) were con­vict­ed in 1975 of the rob­bery and mur­der of Harold Franks based on the…

In the May 2020 edi­tion of Discussions with DPIC, vet­er­an cap­i­tal defense lawyer Kelley Henry (pic­tured), who is rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al Tennessee death-row pris­on­ers fac­ing exe­cu­tion dates in 2020, speaks with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham about the unprece­dent­ed chal­lenges of lit­i­gat­ing death-penal­ty cas­es dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. Henry, a Supervisory Assistant Federal Public Defender in Nashville, pro­vides an inside view of how the…