Publications & Testimony

Major U.S. editorial writers have criticized the Biden administration’s June 30, 2021 announcement of a temporary moratorium on executions while the Department of Justice reviews Trump administration changes to U.S. execution practices, saying that the pause for a limited policy review fails to fulfill the President’s campaign pledge to work to end the federal death penalty. In editorials between July 5 and July 8, the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and CNHI Pulitzer…

The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected the efforts of Arizona prosecutors to expedite the executions of two death-row prisoners and further limit appeals judicial review of legal issues in their cases. The Arizona Attorney General’s office had sought to shorten judicial review in the cases of death-row prisoners Frank Atwood and Clarence Dixon after learning that the shelf life of the drugs it intended to use in the executions would expire before the executions could be carried out. Arizona…

The Arizona Attorney General’s office has asked the Arizona Supreme Court to curtail the time allotted to judicial review of legal issues in the cases of two death-row prisoners prosecutors want to execute, saying that the drugs they intend to use in the executions remain potent half as long as it had previously represented. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (pictured) told the court in April 2021 that it should set expedited filing deadlines in advance of issuing execution warrants for…

Anthony Porter, an Illinois death-row exoneree whose case sparked a chain of events that ultimately led the state to abolish the death penalty, has died. He was 66 years old. In 1983, Porter was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of two teenagers in a southside Chicago park. No physical evidence linked him to the murders, but after more than 17 hours of coercive interrogation, another man, William Taylor, told police that he had seen Porter commit the murders. Porter came within…

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…