Publications & Testimony

In a year of declin­ing death-penal­ty usage across the United States, nowhere was the ero­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as sus­tained and pro­nounced in 2019 as it was in the west­ern United States. Continuing a wave of momen­tum from Washington​’s judi­cial abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in October 2018, one state halt­ed exe­cu­tions and dis­man­tled its death cham­ber, anoth­er cleared its death row, two cut back on the cir­cum­stances in which the death penal­ty could be sought and imposed,…

Alabama sen­tenced Toforest Johnson to death, his lawyers and nation­al experts say, because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, false eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, and inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. In an ami­cus brief filed in a Birmingham tri­al court on December 12, 2019, the Innocence Project says, ​“If ever a case bore the hall­marks of a wrong­ful con­vic­tion, Toforest Johnson’s is…

As the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment tri­al of accused Parkland, Florida school shoot­er Nikolas Cruz was post­poned until at least the sum­mer of 2020, the father of one of the vic­tims of the attack has urged the pros­e­cu­tion to end the case now by drop­ping the death…

Paul Skalnik is a sex offend­er and con man whose jail­house ​“snitch” tes­ti­mo­ny was used by Florida and Texas pros­e­cu­tors to con­vict more than 37 defen­dants, includ­ing four who were sen­tenced to death. His tes­ti­mo­ny that James Dailey (pic­tured) alleged­ly con­fessed to the bru­tal 1985 stab­bing and drown­ing death of 14-year-old Shelley Boggio con­tributed to Dailey’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence, despite the prosecution’s admis­sion that no ​“phys­i­cal evi­dence,” ​“no…

The death penal­ty has now dis­ap­peared from whole regions of the coun­try and con­tin­ues to erode in oth­ers, accord­ing to the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2019 Year End Report. With New Hampshire’s repeal of its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute in May, 21 states have now abol­ished the death penal­ty, with nine hav­ing done so since 2004. In March, California Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions on the nation’s largest death row, join­ing gov­er­nors in Oregon, Colorado, and…

A Mississippi tri­al judge has released Curtis Flowers on $250,000 bail, while pros­e­cu­tors decide whether to attempt to try him a sev­enth time for a quadru­ple mur­der he has long main­tained he did not com­mit. Flowers (pic­tured right, with defense co-coun­sel Henderson Hill) was freed on December 16, 2019, after an anony­mous donor post­ed his bond. He had spent the last 23 years in jail, most of it on death…

Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pic­tured) sought to over­turn his con­vic­tion and fed­er­al death sen­tence on Thursday, argu­ing in a fed­er­al appeals court that he could not get a fair tri­al in a city still trau­ma­tized by the attack. During the two-hour argu­ment before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston on December 12, 2019, they also claimed Tsarnaev was denied an impar­tial jury when the tri­al court pro­hib­it­ed him from asking jurors…

In his last series of acts before leav­ing office, out­go­ing Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (pic­tured) has com­mut­ed the sen­tences of two of the state’s longest serv­ing death-row pris­on­ers to life with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. On Friday, December 6, 2019, Bevin com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Gregory Wilson, whose tri­al pro­ceed­ings had been described as a trav­es­ty of jus­tice. Then on Monday, December 9 — the governor’s last day in office — he commuted…

When Indiana exe­cut­ed Matthew Wrinkles on December 11, 2009, it was the twen­ti­eth exe­cu­tion car­ried out since the state rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in May of 1973. It was also the last exe­cu­tion the state has carried…