Publications & Testimony

A committee created by the California state legislature to study the state’s penal code and propose improvements in the law has recommended that California repeal its death penalty and expeditiously reduce the size of its death row. At the conclusion of a virtual meeting on May 14, 2021, the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code (CRPC) unanimously voted to recommend that the state abolish the death penalty. It was the first ever policy vote on the death penalty by the Committee…

In a failure of transparency one legislative leader described as “unfathomable,” the State of Texas put Quintin Jones (pictured) to death on May 19, 2021 without any media witnesses present to observe the execution. It was the first time in the 571 executions conducted by Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its death penalty statute in 1976 that no media witnesses were present. Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) Director of Communications Jeremy Desel blamed the snafu on…

An Idaho trial court has stayed the scheduled June 2, 2021 execution of Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pictured), halting state prosecutors’ efforts to put the hospice-bound terminally ill prisoner to death before his stage‑4 cancer can take his life and state officials can consider his petition for clemency. On April 9, Pizzuto’s lawyers filed a clemency petition, seeking to commute his sentence to life without possibility parole based upon his terminal illness, brain damage from head injuries…

In a primary election widely considered a referendum on reform prosecutors, incumbent Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner easily secured a victory against former Philadelphia homicide prosecutor Carlos Vega. Krasner won the May 18, 2021 election on a platform of continuing the reform he began four years ago when he was first elected: eschewing use of the death penalty, initiating systemic criminal justice reforms, and ending mass incarceration. Krasner’s Democratic primary win all but…

A former mitigation investigator for the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against two Georgia Department of Corrections investigators and the warden of the state’s maximum security prison, after she was cleared of charges of passing illegal contraband during a meeting with a capitally charged defendant. Lawyers for Lily Engleman filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on May 10, 2021, four days after a…

A bill to abolish Nevada’s death penalty died without a vote in the state senate after Governor Steve Sisolak (pictured) declared on May 13, 2021 that “there is no path forward” to ban the practice. Shortly thereafter, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, one of two Las Vegas prosecutors to hold leadership positions in the legislature, said that legislators had failed to reach a consensus on possible amendments to the bill, ending efforts to move any reforms forward before the legislative…

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has voted to deny clemency to Quintin Jones (pictured, right), disregarding the request by the family of Berthena Bryant, whom Jones killed in 1999, asking Texas Governor Greg Abbott to commute his sentence to life in prison. The board’s vote on May 18, 2021 comes one day before Jones is scheduled to be executed. Bryant was Jones’ great-aunt. The family’s plea for clemency, which stresses Jones’ remorse and rehabilitation, has gained the support of more…

In a case the late Justice Antonin Scalia touted as a justification for capital punishment, a North Carolina federal jury has awarded two intellectually disabled death-row exonerees $75 million for the police misconduct that sent them to death row. On May 14, 2021, half-brothers Henry McCollum (pictured, left) and Leon Brown (pictured, right) were each awarded $31 million, $1 million for each year they spent in prison, plus an additional $13 million in punitive damages. McCollum and Brown were…

NEWS (5/14/21) — North Carolina: A Rowan County trial judge has resentenced William Barnes to consecutive life sentences for the murders of an elderly North Carolina couple in 1992, after the county district attorney’s office declined to pursue a new capital sentencing hearing. The district attorney’s decision, made with the agreement of the victims’ family, followed a federal appeals court ruling that had overturned Barnes’ death sentences because of juror misconduct. In September 2019, the…

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has asked the United States Supreme Court to stay an Oklahoma appeals court ruling that voided the conviction of an Oklahoma death-row prisoner for a triple murder committed on tribal lands against members of the Chickasaw Nation while state prosecutors seek review of that ruling by the U.S. high court. The state prosecutors’ filing in Oklahoma v. Bosse, which the tribe opposes, comes in the midst of four decisions by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal…