Publications & Testimony

Federal prosecutors have filed a petition in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to review a federal appeals court ruling that overturned the death sentence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pictured) in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. On October 6, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a petition for writ of certiorari challenging the July 31 ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that Tsarnaev’s right to an impartial jury had been denied when the trial judge failed…

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that affirmed the sovereignty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation over tribal lands that span much of the eastern half of Oklahoma continues to reverberate through the state’s criminal justice system as prisoners sentenced for murders committed by or against Native Americans on tribal lands challenge the state’s authority to have prosecuted their cases. The Court’s July 9, 2020 decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma already has vacated the conviction and death sentence…

NEWS (10/​5/​20) — Washington, D.C.: The 2020 – 2021 U.S. Supreme Court term opened on October 5 with the Court declining to review challenges to more than 30 death-penalty court decisions. The only death-penalty decision that elicited comment from a member of the Court was the denial of Warren Henness’ petition for certiorari challenging Ohio’s execution protocol. Henness’ execution challenge had been denied by an Ohio federal district court, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit…

The U.S. Senate is preparing to move forward on October 12, 2020 with confirmation hearings on the controversial nomination of conservative federal appeals judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If confirmed, Judge Barrett would shift the center of the Court farther to the right, solidifying the hold of a conservative majority that has become increasingly hostile to constitutional challenges to death sentences and…

A new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has found that police or prosecutorial misconduct is rampant in death-row exoneration cases and occurs even more frequently when the wrongfully death-sentenced exoneree is Black. The report, Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent, released September 15, 2020, examined the factors contributing to 2,400 exonerations since 1989. It found that misconduct was present in more than half of all exonerations and nearly three-quarters of…

North Carolina’s death penalty is a weapon of social control rooted in a racist past. That is the message of a groundbreaking new collaborative project, Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty, by the Durham-based defense organization Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL). Through essays and academic articles containing in-depth analysis, photographs, archival news-clippings, poetry, and stirring personal narratives, the CDPL staff and a legion of notable contributors…

A new papal encyclical letter tells Catholics around the world that “[t]here can be no stepping back” from the Church’s formal opposition to the death penalty. Pope Francis’ October 3, 2020 encyclical, entitled Fratelli Tutti, rejected capital punishment as a ​“false answer[] that … ultimately do[es] no more than introduce new elements of destruction in the fabric of national and global society.” Citing centuries of death-penalty opposition by leading Catholic scholars and clergy and calling…

The Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) have issued new reports documenting the continuing historic decline of the death penalty across the United States. On September 29, 2020, BJS released Capital Punishment, 2018 – Statistical Tables, documenting that death row in the United States has decreased in size for 18 consecutive years from 2001 to 2018. Two days later, on October 1, 2020, LDF followed with the…

NEWS (10/​1/​20) — Washington, D.C.: The federal government has scheduled an eighth execution for 2020, setting a November 19 execution date for Orlando Hall. Hall’s case would be the first federal execution in more than a half-century for the killing of an African-American victim and the second consecutive execution of an African-American prisoner after the executions of five white prisoners and the sole Native American on federal death row. There are currently 55 prisoners on the federal death…

In a 5 – 4 decision, the Supreme Court declined to overturn James Erin McKinney’s Arizona death sentences. McKinney was sentenced to death in 1993 for the killings of two people in the course of a series of burglaries. McKinney’s mitigation evidence included evidence of a childhood filled with instability, abuse, and neglect. This severe childhood abuse resulted in McKinney being diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”). At the time McKinney was tried, Arizona did not allow for jury…