Publications & Testimony

NEWS (3/​13) — North Carolina: The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission vot­ed 5 – 3 to empan­el a three-judge review com­mit­tee to deter­mine whether four men con­vict­ed as teens should be exon­er­at­ed of the mur­der of NBA star Chris Paul’s grand­fa­ther, Nathaniel Jones. A fifth teen con­vict­ed in the mur­der died before he could sub­mit his case for review by…

Washington — A bill that would for­mal­ly remove Washington’s judi­cial­ly abol­ished death penal­ty from the state’s statute books has failed. SB 5339, which passed the state sen­ate on January 31 and was approved by the House Committee on Public Safety on February 27, did not come up for a vote on the floor of the state House of Representatives by the March 7 dead­line for con­sid­er­a­tion dur­ing the 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sion. The fail­ure has no effect on the judicial…

After a review of the case by its Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office has told a state tri­al court that death-row pris­on­er Walter Ogrod (pic­tured) is​“like­ly inno­cent,” that new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence showed that city pros­e­cu­tors had vio­lat­ed his right to due process, and that his con­vic­tion and death sentence…

NEWS (3/​6/​20): The United States Court of Military Appeals has upheld the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Timothy Hennis, fol­low­ing his acquit­tal in North Carolina on the same charges. The court’s rul­ing, issued on February 28, reject­ed Hennis’ chal­lenges to the mil­i­tary court’s juris­dic­tion to try him for a May 1985 rape and…

A bipar­ti­san coali­tion of Ohio law­mak­ers has announced plans to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the Buckeye State. At a press con­fer­ence at the state capi­tol in Columbus on March 4, 2020, State Senator Nickie J. Antonio (D – Lakewood, pic­tured, left) said that she and Senator Peggy Lehner (R – Kettering, pic­tured, right) would be joint­ly spon­sor­ing a bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty and replace it with a sen­tence of life without…

In the March 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Hannah Cox (pic­tured), National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP) speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the con­tin­u­ing move­ment by social and polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives away from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, how the death penal­ty is out of step with core con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues, and the key role that con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors are playing in…

Sandra Lockett-Young (pic­tured, right, with Sister Helen Prejean), whose case estab­lished a cap­i­tal defendant’s right to present a broad range of mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence con­cern­ing her char­ac­ter, back­ground, and record and the cir­cum­stances of her offense, has died. Lockett had suf­fered a severe stroke in June 2019 from which she nev­er recov­ered. She died in an Ohio hos­pice on February 26, 2020 at…

Less than two weeks after Oklahoma offi­cials announced that the state would return to the same con­tro­ver­sial three-drug exe­cu­tion pro­to­col impli­cat­ed in a series of botched exe­cu­tions in 2014 and 2015, the state’s death-row pris­on­ers have asked a fed­er­al court to reac­ti­vate their law­suit chal­leng­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion process. The February 27, 2020 fil­ing in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma called the new…

NEWS (2/​29/​20): Four states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment had sched­uled 12 exe­cu­tions to take place in January or February 2020. Through February 2020, four exe­cu­tions had been car­ried out: two in Texas and one each in Georgia and Tennessee. (To enlarge map, click…

Nathaniel Woods (pic­tured, left) did not shoot Alabama police offi­cers Charles Bennett, Carlos​“Curly” Owen, and Harley Chisholm III (pic­tured left to right, below). But because of alleged police mis­con­duct, incom­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and Alabama law allow­ing death ver­dicts based on non-unan­i­­mous jury votes, he faces exe­cu­tion on March 5, 2020…