Publications & Testimony

More than a dozen former Alabama prosecutors, judges, and state bar presidents have filed briefs in a Birmingham court calling for a new trial for Alabama death-row prisoner Toforest Johnson (pictured, center, with family members). The extraordinary filings join Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr in supporting efforts by lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights, the University of California-Berkeley Law School Death Penalty Clinic, and the Innocence Project to free Johnson…

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has voided the convictions of a second death-row prisoner who was unlawfully tried and condemned in the Oklahoma state courts for an offense that occurred on Native American tribal 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 vacated Shaun Bosse’s convictions and death sentences for the murders of three citizens of the Chickasaw Nation within the…

In the United States, the responsibility for defining what is a crime and enforcing the criminal laws rests primarily with the states. That fact, New York Times columnist Charles Blow (pictured) writes, makes action at the state level “[t]he true frontier of criminal justice equality.” From cash bail to the death penalty, Blow says, “[i]f the criminal justice system is to move toward racial equality and liberation this change will have to start with the states.” Blow’s February 24, 2021…

A federal appeals court has permitted a Texas district court to dismiss a death-row prisoner’s claim that Dallas prosecutors unconstitutionally struck Black jurors in his case without considering evidence of racial discrimination that prosecutors had withheld from the defense during state court litigation on the issue. The February 8, 2021 ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholds the conviction and death sentence imposed on James Broadnax for his participation in the…

NEWS (3/11/21) — Oklahoma: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has voided the conviction and death sentence imposed on Shaun Bosse for the murders of three enrolled members of the Chickasaw Nation within the historical boundaries of the Chickasaw Nation Reservation. Applying the principles announced by the U.S. Supreme in its landmark tribal sovereignty ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma in 2020, the court found that the murders had been committed in “Indian country” and that the Oklahoma state…

Five civil rights organizations have asked a California appeals court to block the efforts of three county district attorneys to lift stays of execution agreed to by the state as part of a federal-court settlement of death-row prisoners’ challenge to California’s lethal-injection protocol. [UPDATE: On March 9, 2021, the First District Court of Appeals dismissed the groups’ lawsuit.] On March 5, 2021, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Congregations Organized for…

New poll results show that more Nevadans now support alternatives to capital punishment and repealing the death penalty than favor its continued use, marking a major shift in opinion in the state in just the past four years. A January 2021 poll of Nevada voters by David Binder Research, released March 4, 2021, found that 49% of Nevadans favor replacing the state’s death penalty with life without parole, compared with 46% who would keep capital punishment. The results represent a…

In the March 2021 edition of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue is joined by Carine Williams — the Chief Program Strategy Officer at the Innocence Project — for a conversation about innocence, the death penalty, and “the function of freedom.” Reflecting on the gross miscarriage of justice exhibited in wrongful convictions and exonerations, Williams stresses two critical themes: death is irrevocable and ending the…

Julius Jones (pictured) will receive a “stage two” commutation hearing after the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3 – 1 to advance his commutation application past the initial summary review stage. Jones maintains his innocence in the 1999 murder of Paul Howell, for which he was sentenced to death in 2002. The board’s March 8 vote means that Jones will receive a more in-depth review of his case for clemency and affords him the opportunity to present witnesses and speak to the board members…