Publications & Testimony

In a wide-ranging six-part editorial series analyzing systemic flaws in the administration of the death penalty, the editorial board of the South Florida Sun Sentinel has called for the abolition of capital punishment. “[I]t is past time to repeal it, here in Florida and nationwide,” the editors wrote. The editorial series, published from March 21 through March 28, 2021, critiqued capital punishment from a variety of angles. The death penalty, the editors wrote, “has nothing to do with…

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to reconsider its decision recognizing the tribal sovereignty of the Chickasaw Nation over crimes committed by or against Native Americans on Chickasaw Nation lands. On March 11, 2021, applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 tribal sovereignty ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Oklahoma appeals court ruled that the Chickasaw Nation Reservation created in a series of treaties between the United States…

A federal district court has ruled that Texas unconstitutionally denied DNA testing to a death-row prisoner who is alive today only because of a last-minute stay of execution granted because the state refused to allow his religious adviser to accompany him in the execution chamber. In a 26-page ruling issued on March 23, 2021, Judge Hilda Tagle of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas paved the way for Ruben Gutierrez (pictured) to obtain DNA testing that he argues will…

NEWS (3/31/21) — Florida: After finding that Florida death-row prisoner William Greg Thomas was entitled to present an untimely habeas corpus petition because his prior lawyer had abandoned him, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reviewed but denied Thomas’ challenge to his conviction and death sentence. The court held that Thomas was entitled to equitable tolling of the habeas corpus statute of limitations but ruled that his ineffective assistance claims were either…

Clemency efforts on behalf of Tennessee death-row prisoner Pervis Payne (pictured) are surging, as a petition on his behalf by The Innocence Project had collected more than 600,000 signatures by March 26, 2021 and social media campaigns supporting his cause continue to attract increasing attention worldwide. Payne’s claims of innocence, intellectual disability, and racial bias have resonated with supporters from numerous religious, legal, and civil rights organizations, including the Tennessee…

California Governor Gavin Newsom has appointed Rob Bonta (pictured), a state legislator who co-authored a proposed state constitutional amendment to ban capital punishment, as California’s attorney general. Bonta fills the vacancy created by President Joe Biden’s appointment of former state attorney general Xavier Becerra as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In his March 24, 2021 announcement of the appointment, Newsom said Bonta “represents what makes California…

In the March 31, 2021 podcast episode of Discussions with DPIC, managing director of DPIC, Anne Holsinger, and Raphael Sperry, president of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), discuss the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) new ethics policy prohibiting members from designing execution chambers and death-row solitary confinement cells. “Architects have been complicit in human rights abuse by designing execution chambers in the United States and spaces for…

Virginia’s capital defenders have “worked themselves out of a job,” according to David Johnson, executive director of the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission. The commonwealth’s four capital defense offices, which opened in 2002, are credited with bringing about a dramatic decline in death sentences. That decline was a major factor in Virginia becoming the first southern state to abolish the death penalty. “The playing field was leveled, and with a level playing field, the death penalty was…

The North Carolina state bar has suspended the law license of a lawyer whose predatory representation of two intellectually disabled death-row exonerees defrauded them of hundreds of thousands of dollars. After a multi-day disciplinary hearing beginning March 15, 2021, a three-member panel of the North Carolina State Bar Disciplinary Hearing Commission suspended Patrick Megaro’s license to practice law in the state for five years. The panel also ordered Megaro to repay half-brothers Henry…

The Georgia Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the uniquely high burden of proof the state imposes on capital defendants and death-row prisoners to determine whether they are ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. On March 23, 2021, the court heard argument in a case brought by Rodney Young, a death-row prisoner who asserts that Georgia’s harsh standard unconstitutionally subjects defendants with intellectual disability to capital prosecution and possible…