Publications & Testimony

A fed­er­al dis­trict court has grant­ed a new tri­al to Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er Samuel Randolph (pic­tured), hold­ing that the tri­al court uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly denied Randolph the right to be rep­re­sent­ed by coun­sel of choice, forc­ing him to go to tri­al with an unpre­pared court-appoint­ed lawyer with whom he had an ​“absolute[,] com­plete breakdown of…

A fed­er­al dis­trict court judge has over­turned the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Texas death-row pris­on­er Ronald Prible, find­ing that celebri­ty ​“true crime” host Kelly Siegler (pic­tured) had engaged in exten­sive mis­con­duct as a Harris County homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor in Prible’s cap­i­tal tri­al in 2002. U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison grant­ed relief on six sep­a­rate claims that Siegler hid excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence from the defense, pro­vid­ed undis­closed favors to…

For the third time in 2020, the Florida Supreme Court has reduced the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions afford­ed to death-row pris­on­ers. In a May 21 deci­sion in Phillips v. State, the court over­turned its own case prece­dent and lim­it­ed enforce­ment of a U.S. Supreme Court case that bars exe­cu­tion of intellectually disabled…

Just 20% of Houstonians — a record low — now sup­port the death penal­ty over life-sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tives, a new Rice University sur­vey has found. The 2020 Houston Area Survey by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, released on May 4, 2020, found that death-penal­ty sup­port has declined by more than half since the turn of the 21^st cen­tu­ry in the city of 2.3 million…

Johnny Lee Gates (pic­tured) is free, 43 years after being sen­tenced to death in Georgia for a mur­der he has stead­fast­ly main­tained he did not…

The first new death sen­tence and first exe­cu­tion since pub­lic health con­cerns aris­ing from the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic shut­tered most court pro­ceed­ings across the coun­try have high­light­ed sev­er­al of the gravest con­cerns about the death penal­ty in the United…

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…