Publications & Testimony

NEWS (2/​26/​20): The Colorado leg­is­la­ture has sent to the Governor a bill that would prospec­tive­ly abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty. On February 26, 2020, one day after a marathon 12-hour debate on the floor of the House, the Colorado House of Representatives vot­ed 38 – 27 to pass SB 20 – 100 to repeal the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute. The Senate had pre­vi­ous­ly approved the leg­is­la­tion on January…

Tennessee has set two more exe­cu­tion dates for 2020, direct­ed, advo­cates say, at men whose cas­es present unre­solved issues of inno­cence, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and mental…

Vernon Madison, an Alabama death-row pris­on­er whose severe demen­tia led to a major Supreme Court deci­sion on com­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed, has died in prison at the age of…

Nine years after an American Bar Association (ABA) study iden­ti­fied sys­temic defi­cien­cies in Kentucky’s admin­is­tra­tion of its death-penal­ty laws, a new report by past and cur­rent Kentucky pub­lic defend­ers charges that the Commonwealth’s fail­ure to take any mean­ing­ful reme­di­al action under­mines the legit­i­ma­cy of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the…

NEWS (2/​24/​20): On February 24, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Texas death-row pris­on­er Rodney Reed’s peti­tion for writ of cer­tio­rari, declin­ing to review his case. Reed’s peti­tion raised the ques­tion, not yet addressed by the Court, ​“Does the con­vic­tion or exe­cu­tion of a per­son who is actu­al­ly inno­cent of the crime vio­late the United States Constitution?” It also asked the Court to con­sid­er the appro­pri­ate stan­dard for low­er courts to assess: (1) the prej­u­dice from the…

A Florida state court judge has grant­ed death-row pris­on­er James Dailey an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on his claim that he did not com­mit the mur­der for which he was sen­tenced to death three decades…

NEWS (2/​20/​20): Tennessee exe­cut­ed Nicholas Sutton on February 20, 2020, one day after Governor Bill Lee denied a peti­tion for clemen­cy that had been sup­port­ed by sev­en cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers, five jurors, and mem­bers of the victims’…

Nebraska​’s uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture vot­ed on February 13, 2020 to advance a bill that would increase trans­paren­cy in the state’s exe­cu­tion process. LB 238, which would allow wit­ness­es to see the exe­cu­tion from the moment the pris­on­er enters the death cham­ber until the pris­on­er is declared dead or the exe­cu­tion is halt­ed, passed an ini­tial con­sid­er­a­tion by a 33 – 7 vote. It must pass a sec­ond vote in order to be sub­mit­ted to the…

NEWS (2/​19/​20): Dana Cook has been named National Mitigation Coordinator for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ National Habeas Assistance and Training Counsel Project. Cook has more than two decades of expe­ri­ence in cap­i­tal defend­er offices in Pennsylvania and Tennessee work­ing as a mit­i­ga­tion spe­cial­ist at the tri­al and post-con­vic­tion stages of death-penal­ty cas­es and in train­ing lawyers and inves­ti­ga­tors in prepar­ing and pre­sent­ing mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. She…