Publications & Testimony

Why is the death penal­ty pur­sued and imposed in some cas­es and not in oth­ers that, at first glance, seem facial­ly indis­tin­guish­able? Surveying the aca­d­e­m­ic lit­er­a­ture, Daniel Medwed, the University Distinguished Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University School of Law, points to one of the fac­tors that ​“seeps into charg­ing and sen­tenc­ing deci­sions in mean­ing­ful and dis­turb­ing ways“ — race: first, the race of the vic­tim and then the race of the…

The last three men sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Georgia said they did not com­mit the killing and that DNA test­ing that was not avail­able at the time of tri­al could prove it. In two of the cas­es, vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­bers sup­port­ed the request for test­ing. Prosecutors opposed the requests, and the courts refused to allow the test­ing. Two of the three men were exe­cut­ed, with doubts still swirling as to their…

Three groups, rep­re­sent­ing pros­e­cu­tors, the Catholic Church, and polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives, have filed briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court sup­port­ing the efforts of Florida death-row pris­on­er James Dailey (pic­tured) to obtain judi­cial review of his inno­cence claim. Dailey filed a peti­tion for cer­tio­rari on January 10, 2020 ask­ing the Supreme Court to hear his case, after the Florida courts refused to con­sid­er evi­dence that anoth­er man had con­fessed to the…

NEWS (2/​6/​20): Texas exe­cut­ed Abel Ochoa on February 6, 2020. Ochoa unsuc­cess­ful­ly sought clemen­cy on the grounds that he had shown great remorse for his crime and been reha­bil­i­tat­ed. Ochoa had sought a stay of exe­cu­tion alleg­ing that Texas uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly inter­fered in the clemen­cy pro­ceed­ings in his case by pre­vent­ing him from sub­mit­ting evi­dence in sup­port of his clemen­cy appli­ca­tion. Although Texas rou­tine­ly per­mits mem­bers of the media to film death row pris­on­ers for…

NEWS (2/​6/​20): Sonny Boy Oats will come off Florida’s death row after 39 years, pros­e­cu­tors announced on February 6. Oats was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Marion County in 1981. His lawyers have argued that exe­cut­ing Oats would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. With eight of nine psy­chi­a­trists and psy­chol­o­gists who eval­u­at­ed Oats con­clud­ing that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, State Attorney Ric Ridgway told the court that his office would no…

NEWS (2/​5/​20): The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Marine Corps vet­er­an John Thuesen, who sus­tained com­bat-relat­ed PTSD from his ser­vice in the war in Iraq. In an unsigned, unpub­lished opin­ion on February 5, the appeals court adopt­ed all but a hand­ful of the tri­al court’s find­ings of fact and con­clu­sions of law, which had reject­ed Thuesen’s claim that his tri­al lawyer had been inef­fec­tive in fail­ing to inves­ti­gate and present…

As the death penal­ty con­tin­ues to wilt across the coun­try, what­ev­er peno­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion it once pur­port­ed­ly served is dying as well, say cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment schol­ars Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker (pic­tured). In their new arti­cle The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States in the January 2020 Annual Review of Criminology, the Steikers exam­ine four cen­tral issues in the rise and fall of the death penal­ty in…

Calling the death penal­ty ​“a failed gov­ern­ment pro­gram,” 21 cur­rent and for­mer Virginia pros­e­cu­tors have signed on to a let­ter to the commonwealth’s General Assembly urg­ing the leg­is­la­ture to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The let­ter was signed by for­mer Attorneys General Mark L. Earley, Sr., a Republican who presided over 36 exe­cu­tions dur­ing 13 years in office, and Democrat William G. Broaddus, nine cur­rent or for­mer Commonwealth’s Attorneys elect­ed across the state, and 12 oth­er former…

For the third con­sec­u­tive year, the Washington State Senate has vot­ed to remove the death penal­ty from the state’s statute books. In a 28 – 18 vote praised by abo­li­tion advo­cates for its bipar­ti­san­ship, four sen­ate Republicans joined 24 of their Democratic col­leagues on January 30, 2020 to for­mal­ly repeal Washington’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law. With a new Speaker replac­ing Democratic lead­er­ship who had pre­vent­ed the bill from com­ing up for a vote in the House in 2018 and 2019, the prospects of the…