Publications & Testimony

NEWS — January 24: Keith ​“Bo” Tharpe has died on Georgia’s death row. He was 61 years old. Tharpe was tried and sen­tenced to death in 1991, a mere three months after his offense. His sen­tence was taint­ed by a racist juror who referred to Tharpe as a ​“ni***r” and said he won­dered whether ​“Black peo­ple even have souls.” Tharpe’s appeals lawyers said he like­ly died of com­pli­ca­tions from…

On Martin Luther King Day, DPIC looks at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s views on the death…

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has grant­ed clemen­cy to death-row pris­on­er Jimmy Meders (pic­tured). One day after his January 15, 2020 clemen­cy hear­ing, and just six hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the Board announced it had com­mut­ed Meders’ death sen­tence to a sen­tence of life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of…

A three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard near­ly two hours of argu­ment on January 15, 2020 in four con­sol­i­dat­ed cas­es that could deter­mine whether the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will be able to resume exe­cu­tions in 2020. The appeals pan­el — com­posed of Gregory G. Katsas and Neomi Rao, both appoint­ed by President Donald Trump, and David S. Tatel, appoint­ed by for­mer President Bill Clinton — sharply ques­tioned lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and four…

As Texas pre­pared to car­ry out the first exe­cu­tion of 2020 on January 15, neigh­bor­ing Oklahoma — once the sec­ond most pro­lif­ic exe­cu­tion­er in the United States — marked five years since its last exe­cu­tion. The states present a con­trast in exe­cu­tion prac­tices. Though the use of the death penal­ty has sharply declined in both states, Texas con­tin­ues to lead the nation in exe­cu­tions, while Oklahoma will join the near­ly two-thirds of death-penal­ty states (18 of…

Just Mercy, the movie adap­ta­tion of Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) Executive Director Bryan Stevenson​’s book of the same name, cel­e­brat­ed its nation­wide release on January 10, 2020 with week­end tick­et sales of more than $9.7 mil­lion. The film, which focus­es on the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Walter McMillian—one of Stevenson’s ear­ly death-penal­ty cas­es — ranked fifth among all movies in domes­tic box office…

On January 16, Georgia plans to exe­cute Jimmy Meders (pic­tured in his National Guard uni­form), a man whom jurors say they would have sen­tenced to life with­out parole if that option had been avail­able and who, state sen­tenc­ing prac­tices sug­gest, would not face the death penal­ty today. For those rea­sons, Meders’ lawyers say in court plead­ings and an appli­ca­tion before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, his exe­cu­tion would vio­late con­tem­po­rary standards…

NEWS — January 14 and 17: Florida juries have reject­ed the death penal­ty in cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing retri­als of two pris­on­ers who had ini­tial­ly been uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death fol­low­ing non-unan­i­mous jury votes for…

In two cas­es in which the death penal­ty played a cen­tral role, recent exonerees in Florida and Idaho have ini­ti­at­ed legal pro­ceed­ings against gov­ern­ment offi­cials, alleg­ing that they were wrong­ful­ly pros­e­cut­ed and…

The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that the 2015 leg­isla­tive repeal of the state’s death-penal­ty statute did not inval­i­date the death sen­tences of the pris­on­ers on the state’s death row because the repeal bill nev­er became law before it was reject­ed by a statewide voter…