Publications & Testimony

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…

Judicial enforce­ment of con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in Texas death penal­ty cas­es has become increas­ing­ly rare and is vir­tu­al­ly non-exis­tent in the state’s fed­er­al courts, a new University of Houston Law Center study has found. The study, Reversal Rates in Capital Cases in Texas, 2000 – 2020, pub­lished online on April 27, 2020 in the UCLA Law Review, reports that rever­sal rates in cas­es in which Texas cap­i­tal defen­dants were sen­tenced to death in the first two decades of the 21^st…

NEWS (5/​7/​20) — Texas: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Randall Mays, direct­ing a Henderson County tri­al court to review Mays’ claim that he is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The appeals court declined to address claims that Mays’ con­vic­tion and death sen­tence had been taint­ed by racial bias and juror mis­con­duct and that he had been sub­ject to improp­er inter­ro­ga­tion by law…

Oklahoma will not seek to car­ry out any exe­cu­tions while lit­i­ga­tion con­tin­ues in fed­er­al court on the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, a U.S. fed­er­al dis­trict court judge has…

Pervis Payne (pic­tured) was young, black, and, he says, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The son of a min­is­ter, he is on death row in Tennessee, con­vict­ed of the hor­rif­ic mur­ders of a white woman and her two-year-old daugh­ter and the stab­bing of her three-year-old son in 1987. His case, pro­filed by Steven Hale in The Appeal on April 29, 2020, fea­tures evi­dence of inno­cence, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, and racial…

Alleging that the Texas prison sys­tem is ​“fail­ing to under­take take basic mea­sures to pro­tect [them] from the risk of dis­ease and death” pre­sent­ed by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, pris­on­ers on the state’s death row have filed a class-action motion to join a fed­er­al prison-con­di­tions law­suit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice…

In a fed­er­al cap­i­tal case with impli­ca­tions relat­ing to trib­al sov­er­eign­ty, a fed­er­al appeals court has denied a Native-American prisoner’s appeal seek­ing to inves­ti­gate racial bias in his case, while ques­tion­ing the fed­er­al government’s pur­suit of the death penalty against…

NEWS (5/​1/​20) — Ohio: By a vote of 6 – 2, the Ohio Parole Board has rec­om­mend that Governor Mike DeWine com­mute the sen­tence of death-row pris­on­er Gregory Lott (pic­tured) to life with­out parole. The deci­sion on clemen­cy is now up to Gov. DeWine, who has twice delayed Lott’s…