Publications & Testimony

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…

Texas is prepar­ing to exe­cute Travis Runnels (pic­tured) on December 11, 2019 based on the ​“expert” tes­ti­mo­ny of a pros­e­cu­tion inves­ti­ga­tor whose false depic­tion of prison con­di­tions has helped to put fif­teen defen­dants on the state’s death row. If Runnels is exe­cut­ed, he will be the third per­son put to death in Texas this year after for­mer Texas Special Prosecution Unit crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tor, A.P. Merillat pro­vid­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny at their…

The United States Supreme Court has denied an appli­ca­tion by the U.S. Department of Justice to lift a fed­er­al court injunc­tion block­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from car­ry­ing out four exe­cu­tions sched­uled for December 2019 and January 2020. The Court’s unan­i­mous rul­ing, issued Friday evening December 6, ensures that there will be no fed­er­al executions in…

A fed­er­al appeals court has reversed the con­vic­tion of Arizona death-row pris­on­er Barry Jones (pic­tured) based on med­ical evi­dence sug­gest­ing that he may not have com­mit­ted the mur­der for which he was sentenced to…

The state of Tennessee exe­cut­ed Lee Hall (pic­tured) on December 5, 2019, with­out pro­vid­ing him judi­cial review of a legal claim that led the state’s courts to over­turn the con­vic­tion of a for­mer death-row pris­on­er just weeks…