Publications & Testimony

NEWS (3/2/21) — Mississippi: Mississippi will pay death-row exoneree Curtis Flowers $500,000 in compensation for the 23 years in prison after facing six trials and four wrongful convictions for a 1996 quadruple murder in a furniture store. A state court judge accepted the parties’ joint stipulation that Flowers was entitled to the half-million dollar statutory maximum compensation permitted under Mississippi law. Mississippi’s compensation statute provides for compensation of $50,000 per year…

A Wyoming state senate committee has advanced to the full Senate a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty. After taking testimony from witnesses including the state public defender’s office, family members of murder victims, a death-row exoneree, anti-death-penalty activists, religious organizations, and a national expert on capital punishment, the all-Republican Senate Revenue Committee voted 4 – 1 on March 4, 2021 to pass Senate File 150. The vote marked the second time in three years that a…

An evenly divided Indiana Supreme Court has affirmed a trial court ruling that requires the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC) to release records related to the lethal injection drugs Indiana has used in carrying out executions, including the identities of the drug suppliers. The documents were the subject of a public records suit filed by Washington, D.C. lawyer A. Katherine Toomey under the Indiana Access to Public Records Act (APRA). In a statement issued after the decision, Toomey’s…

In an overwhelming bipartisan vote, the Kentucky House of Representatives has approved a bill that would prohibit the death penalty for people with severe mental illness. On March 1, 2021, the House voted by a margin of 75 – 16 to pass HB 148. The bill received the support of 56 Republicans and 19 Democrats in Kentucky’s Republican-dominated legislature. House Majority Whip Rep. Chad McCoy (R‑Bardstown, pictured), who sponsored the bill, said, “This is not an insanity defense, not taking away…

As supporters of Oklahoma death-row prisoner Julius Jones submitted more than six million signatures supporting his petition for clemency, new evidence emerged that another man had committed the killing that sent Jones to death row. On February 25, 2021, Jones’ supporters joined members of his family and Oklahoma City faith leaders for a rally and march to the offices of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, where they delivered boxes containing petitions signed by more than 6 million people…

Frustrated by the inability to put prisoners to death, legislators in two states are seeking to jumpstart the execution process by changing the laws that govern how executions may be conducted. After gaining little traction in prior legislative sessions, a bill to make electrocution the default method of execution is moving forward in South Carolina, which is approaching ten years since its last execution. In Montana, after a court ruled in 2015 that the drugs in the state’s proposed execution…

NEWS (2/25/21) — Alabama: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit has denied habeas relief for Alabama death-row prisoner Charles Clark, who the trial court had sentenced to death based upon a non-unanimous jury sentencing vote. Clark had argued that the trial court improperly ordered that he be shackled during the trial, without an adequate justification and without placing the reasons for shackling him on the record. His trial counsel had waived the claim by failing to object and Clark…

Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials repeatedly misrepresented accounts of the executions they carried out in 2020 and 2021, providing sanitized descriptions of the executions that omitted all references to dramatic body movements and signs of distress observed by media witnesses, according to an Associated Press report. The sworn accounts by executioners, which federal prosecutors provided to an expert witness and to a federal district court judge to defeat the prisoners’ court claims…

Expressing concerns about wrongful convictions, racially disparate impact, and arbitrariness, Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland (pictured) told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing on February 22, 2021 that the death penalty has given him “great pause.” Garland said that he “expect[s] that the President will be giving direction” on the federal death-penalty policy, and that it was “not at all unlikely” that the Department of Justice would impose a moratorium on…

Death-penalty repeal legislation in Virginia will move to Governor Ralph Northam’s desk, after both houses approved the bill passed earlier in the session in the opposite chamber. Virginia’s legislative rules required the House of Delegates to pass the Senate bill or vice versa, even though the bill text was identical. Governor Northam has pledged to sign the bill, which will make Virginia the 23^rd state, and the first in the South, to abolish capital punishment. The Virginia Senate passed HB…