Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of Jewish death-row pris­on­er Randy Halprin (pic­tured), who was tried and sen­tenced to death in Texas before a judge who made anti-Semitic and racist com­ments about Halprin and his co-defen­dants. The April 6, 2020 deci­sion marked the sec­ond time in less than two months that the Court has declined to review a con­tro­ver­sial Texas death-penal­ty case in the wake of stays of exe­cu­tion that left…

Saying she want­ed jus­tice for her mur­dered four-year-old daugh­ter, not ​“a closed case with an inno­cent per­son in jail,” Sharon Fahy has joined with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and defense lawyers in the fight to imme­di­ate­ly free Walter Ogrod (pic­tured) from Pennsylvania​’s death…

NEWS (4/​9/​20) — Pennsylvania: 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 con­fine­ment. In a 14-page Memorandum and Order, Judge John E. Jones III of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania expressed…

The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death penal­ty law against a claim that its death-sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure vio­lates cap­i­tal defen­dants’ Sixth Amendment right to a jury…

A bad­ly divid­ed fed­er­al court of appeals has lift­ed a court order that had pre­vent­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from resum­ing exe­cu­tions after a hia­tus of more than 16…

NEWS (4/​7/​20) — Nevada: A tri­al-court judge in Las Vegas has dis­missed a law­suit filed by drug­mak­ers against the Nevada prison sys­tem after state offi­cials agreed to return unused drugs it had obtained under false pre­tens­es in a failed attempt to exe­cute Scott Dozier in 2018. Pharmaceutical com­pa­nies Alvogen, Inc., Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA, and Sandoz Inc. reached a set­tle­ment with the state in which Nevada agreed to give back the drugs, which have expired, in exchange for a…

Ohio death-row pris­on­er Melvin Bonnell (pic­tured) has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to vacate his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence after his lawyers dis­cov­ered phys­i­cal evi­dence from his case that Cuyahoga County pros­e­cu­tors had repeat­ed­ly insist­ed since the mid-1990s had been lost or…

NEWS (4/​6/​20) — Texas: A Texas tri­al court has resched­uled the exe­cu­tion of Billy Joe Wardlow from April 29, 2020 until July 8, 2020, the fourth exe­cu­tion in Texas that has been post­poned because of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. District Judge Angela Saucier grant­ed a motion filed by the Morris County District Attorney’s office to resched­ule the exe­cu­tion, rather than with­draw­ing the death war­rant as a defense motion had request­ed. If the court had with­drawn the warrant,…