Publications & Testimony

NEWS (4/16/21) — Tennessee: The Tennessee Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence imposed in the May 2016 retrial of Michael Rimmer for the murder of his ex-girlfriend in 1997. Rimmer’s death sentence had initially been overturned by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in 2001 because the jury had improperly considered both the murder itself and a prior conviction for a non-violent offense in supporting of an aggravating circumstance that Rimmer had a prior history of convictions for…

Executions for drug offenses plummeted worldwide during 2020, according to a new report by the global drug-policy monitor Harm Reduction International (HRI). Three countries — China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran — carried out 30 confirmed executions for non-violent drug crimes over the course of the year, the group reported in its annual analysis, The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2020. The total, the April 7, 2021 report said, was the lowest since HRI began reporting on…

On April 14, 2021, committees in both chambers of the Tennessee legislature voted to advance bills that would create a legal mechanism for death-row prisoners to challenge their death sentences on the grounds that they have intellectual disability. The legislation would close a loophole in Tennessee law that denies prisoners whose convictions became final before the U.S. Supreme Court barred the execution of individuals with intellectual disability any opportunity to present their claims of…

At a time in which the Arizona Department of Corrections is facing criticism for crumbling infrastructure, substandard medical care, and understaffing, the department has spent $1.5 million to purchase the lethal-injection drug pentobarbital from an undisclosed source. The exorbitant price, experts say, is a function of the questionable use of the drug for non-medical purposes and the secretive nature of the transaction. Records obtained by The Guardian show that, in October 2020, Arizona…

The Nevada State Assembly has passed a bill that would abolish the state’s death penalty and resentence the prisoners currently on its death row to life without parole. It was the first time any death-penalty abolition bill had been reported out of committee and considered by either house of the Nevada legislature. AB 395 passed the Assembly on April 13, 2021 by a vote of 26 – 16, with all Democrats supporting the measure and all Republicans opposing it. The bill advances to the state senate…

After more than 40 years on Florida’s death row, Sonny Boy Oats (pictured), one of the nation’s longest serving death-row prisoners, has been found ineligible for the death penalty. On April 2, 2021, a Marion County trial court vacated Oats’ death sentence and resentenced him to life in prison, accepting a stipulation between prosecutors and the defense that Oats is intellectually disabled. In February 2020, Ric Ridgway, Chief Assistant in the Florida Fifth Circuit State Attorney’s office…

Nearly seven years after the botched execution of Joseph Wood put the death penalty on hold in Arizona, state officials are seeking to resume executions. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced on April 6, 2021 that he is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to set a briefing schedule and issue execution warrants for death-row prisoners Clarence Dixon and Frank Atwood. At present, no state but Texas has any pending executions scheduled for 2021. The Attorney General’s announcement drew…

NEWS (4/8/21) — Nevada: The Nevada Supreme Court has granted capital defendant Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman’s emergency motion to stay a premature deadline the trial court had set for his lawyers to file a claim that he is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. A trial court in Reno had set an April 20 deadline for Martinez-Guzman, four months earlier than the time allotted under Nevada law, which permits a defendant to file up to ten days before the scheduled…

Just one out of every six death sentences imposed in Ohio in the past forty years has resulted in an execution, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s 2020 Ohio Capital Crimes Annual Report. The report, released by Attorney General Dave Yost on April 1, 2021, criticized the state’s death-penalty system as “increasingly time-consuming, costly, and lethargic.” According to the report, 336 people have been sentenced to death since the state’s current death-penalty law was instituted in 1981. Of…

More than thirty years after a Florida judge sentenced him to death following an 8 – 4 sentencing recommendation by an all-white jury, Crosley Green (pictured) has been freed. Citing Green’s age and health risks related to continued incarceration during the pandemic, Judge Roy B. Dalton of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on April 7, 2021, ordered Green’s immediate release while a federal appeals court considers prosecutors’ appeal of the district court’s July 2018…