Publications & Testimony

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the May 6, 2020 exe­cu­tion of Edward Busby (pic­tured) for six­ty days. Busby’s was the nation’s sev­enth exe­cu­tion post­poned in the United States because of the coro­n­avirus and the sixth in…

NEWS (4/​24/​20) — California: The death penal­ty tri­al of Kori Muhammad for the killings of four peo­ple in two sep­a­rate inci­dents end­ed with­out advanc­ing to a penal­ty phase just two days after a Fresno County jury con­vict­ed him of one count of first-degree mur­der and three counts of sec­ond-degree mur­der. The tri­al had been inter­rupt­ed by coro­n­avirus court clo­sures, with guilt-phase jury delib­er­a­tions halt­ed for four weeks in March, then com­plet­ed on April…

A fed­er­al judge has ruled that a civ­il rights law­suit against a detec­tive who alleged­ly framed a Kentucky woman for a mur­der she was phys­i­cal­ly inca­pable of com­mit­ting may pro­ceed to a jury…

The release of a for­mer Virginia death-row pris­on­er has been delayed after police orga­ni­za­tions demand­ed an inquiry into the Virginia Parole Board deci­sion to grant parole to Vincent Lamont Martin (pic­tured), con­vict­ed of the 1979 mur­der of a Richmond police…

Executions across the globe fell 5% world­wide in 2019 to the fewest in more than a decade, despite a record num­ber of exe­cu­tions in Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International report­ed in the human rights organization’s Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions in…

Seventy-nine-year-old James Frazier (pic­tured) is Ohio​’s old­est death-row pris­on­er. He has demen­tia, he can­not walk, and he requires the assis­tance of aides to com­plete dai­ly tasks. Because of his spe­cial med­ical needs, he is incar­cer­at­ed at the Franklin Medical Center, rather than on Ohio’s death row at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution. Ohio is sched­uled to exe­cute him on October 20,…

Jerry Givens (pic­tured), who per­formed 62 exe­cu­tions dur­ing his time as a Virginia cor­rec­tions offi­cer, but lat­er became an activist against the death penal­ty, died April 13, 2020 of COVID-19. He was 67 years old. During his 17 years (1982 – 1999) as a mem­ber of Virginia’s exe­cu­tion team, the com­mon­wealth per­formed more exe­cu­tions than any oth­er state except…

The Tennessee Supreme Court has stayed the June 4, 2020 exe­cu­tion of death-row pris­on­er Oscar Franklin Smith (pic­tured) and resched­uled his exe­cu­tion for February 4, 2021. The order, issued on April 17, 2020, grant­ed a stay request filed by Smith’s lawyers, who had sought a post­pone­ment on the grounds that, because of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, they had lost ​“crit­i­cal time” for inves­ti­ga­tion in the…

A fed­er­al dis­trict court judge has approved a set­tle­ment of a class action chal­lenge to the con­di­tions of con­fine­ment on Pennsylvania’s death row that offi­cial­ly ends the state’s pol­i­cy of manda­to­ry incar­cer­a­tion of death-row pris­on­ers in per­ma­nent solitary…

Beginning April 15, 2020, two tele­vi­sion series — one a new pro­gram from Netflix and the oth­er new episodes of a return­ing series from CNN — will high­light sto­ries of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, includ­ing some death-penalty…