Publications & Testimony
Items: 1381 — 1390
Feb 17, 2020
News Brief — Kentucky Public Defender Cleared of Tampering Charges in Death Penalty Case
NEWS (2/17/20): A Kentucky public defender has been cleared of charges that she tampered with evidence in a capital case. On February 17, 2020, a Kentucky grand jury declined to indict Angela Elleman on a felony charge arising out of allegations that she and a defense investigator had dug up shell casings linked to a murder case and kept them in a safe for more than six years. Elleman represents Anthony Hogan,…
Read MoreFeb 14, 2020
Oklahoma Announces Plans to Resume Executions by Lethal Injection With Controversial Three-Drug Protocol
After a five-year hiatus, Oklahoma has announced plans to resume executions by returning to the same combination of lethal-injection drugs that were part of its execution protocol during a series of botched executions in…
Read MoreFeb 13, 2020
NEW PODCAST: He May Be Innocent and Intellectually Disabled, But Rocky Myers Faces Execution in Alabama
Rocky Myers (pictured) may be innocent and intellectually disabled, and his jury voted to sentence him to life. So why is he facing execution in…
Read MoreFeb 13, 2020
News Brief — California Supreme Court Overturns Conviction in 37-Year-Old Death Penalty Case
NEWS (2/13/20): The California Supreme Court has granted a new trial to Kenneth Earl Gay, who was sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of a Los Angeles police officer. In a unanimous decision on February 13, 2020, the court ruled that Gay’s lawyer had“obtained appointment to represent Gay through fraud, counseled him to make damaging confessions to the prosecution without safeguards to ensure the confessions would not be used without a deal…
Read MoreFeb 13, 2020
News Brief — Florida Supreme Court Denies Relief in Three Death Penalty Cases
NEWS (2/13/20): The Florida Supreme Court issued opinions on February 13, 2020 denying relief to prisoners in three death…
Read MoreFeb 12, 2020
Major Newspapers in Ohio, Washington Editorialize in Favor of Death Penalty Repeal
As state legislatures in Ohio and Washington contemplate the future of their death-penalty statutes, major newspapers in each of the states are advocating legislative…
Read MoreFeb 12, 2020
News Brief — Texas Overturns Death Sentence of Charles Brownlow
NEWS (2/12/20): On February 12, 2020, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentence imposed on Charles Brownlow, Jr. in Kaufman County in April 2016. The appeals court ruled that Brownlow’s jury had been prevented from properly evaluating his claim of intellectual…
Read MoreFeb 11, 2020
Texas Appeals Court Hears Argument that Incompetent Lawyering, Race Bias Infected Death Sentence of Man Who Gouged Out and Ate His Own Eye
Andre Thomas (pictured) is a Texas death-row prisoner riven with schizophrenia so severe that, in separate incidents, he gouged out both of his eyes and ate one of them. The U.S. Court of Appeals heard oral argument on February 5, 2020, about whether his conviction and death sentence should be overturned because his lawyers failed to present evidence that he was incompetent to be tried, failed to present mitigating evidence of Thomas’…
Read MoreFeb 11, 2020
News Brief — Pennsylvania Federal Court Stays Execution of Jordan Clemons
NEWS (2/11/20): The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania has stayed the execution of Jordan Clemons, which had been scheduled for March 13, 2020. As required by a law enacted by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1995, Clemons was the subject of a legally premature execution date, even though he had not yet had the opportunity to appeal his conviction and death sentence in state or federal post-conviction proceedings and was…
Read MoreFeb 10, 2020
New Article: “Black Deaths Matter: The Race-of-Victim Effect and Capital Punishment”
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…
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