Publications & Testimony

Pakistan (4/​3/​20) — The Sindh High Court, the high­est court of the Pakistani province of Sindh, has over­turned the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh for the graph­ic mur­der of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002. The court upheld Sheikh’s con­vic­tion for kid­nap­ping, reduced his sen­tence to sev­en years in prison, and released him on time served. The court acquit­ted three oth­ers of the…

Courts are fail­ing bad­ly in keep­ing junk psy­cho­log­i­cal sci­ence out of the court­room in crim­i­nal cas­es, per­mit­ting the admis­sion of psy­cho­log­i­cal tests that have nev­er been reviewed for reli­a­bil­i­ty and oth­ers that have been found unre­li­able, a recent study reports. Among the prob­lem­at­ic tests, anoth­er group of psy­chol­o­gists write, is a​“psy­chopa­thy check­list” com­mon­ly used by pros­e­cu­tors to argue that a defen­dant pos­es a future dan­ger to society…

After ignor­ing health risks posed by lengthy court pro­ceed­ings dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and fac­ing crit­i­cism that a cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion fol­low­ing the state’s abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment would amount to a polit­i­cal­ly par­ti­san waste of tax­pay­er dol­lars, pros­e­cu­tors in Adams County, Colorado have announced that they will drop the death penal­ty in a high-pro­­file case involv­ing the killing of a sheriff’s…

Nebraska (4/​3/​20) — In a state post-con­vic­­tion appeal, the Nebraska Supreme Court reject­ed a chal­lenge to the state’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing process filed by death-row prisoner Jeffrey…

NEWS (4/​1/​20) — Texas: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has grant­ed a 60-day stay of exe­cu­tion to Fabian Hernandez, the third stay of exe­cu­tion it has grant­ed dur­ing the coro­n­avirus State of Disaster declared by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Although the court’s order does­n’t spec­i­fy a rea­son for the stay, Hernandez’s coun­sel filed a motion seek­ing to delay his exe­cu­tion based on​“the cur­rent health cri­sis, the…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has once again reject­ed the find­ings of a tri­al court that a death-row pris­on­er was enti­tled to relief from his conviction or…

After receiv­ing unan­i­mous sup­port in the Florida House of Representatives, a bill that would have expand­ed access to post­con­vic­tion DNA test­ing failed in the Florida Senate when the leg­isla­tive body adjourned its 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sion without taking…

The pub­lic health cri­sis from the COVID-19 coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has halt­ed exe­cu­tions in the United States and, legal experts say, is like­ly to con­tin­ue to do for the foreseeable…

NEWS (3/​27/​20): California — A three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (pic­tured) has affirmed a California fed­er­al dis­trict court’s denial of habeas cor­pus relief for death-row pris­on­er Rodney Berryman,…

In a deci­sion that exposed the deep divide between the United States and its European allies on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment issues, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom unan­i­mous­ly ruled that the British gov­ern­ment unlaw­ful­ly pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion to the United States about two sus­pect­ed Islamic State mem­bers with­out first obtain­ing assur­ances that the infor­ma­tion would not be used to impose or car­ry out the…