Publications & Testimony

After being reversed twice by the United States Supreme Court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) has resen­tenced intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row pris­on­er Bobby James Moore to life in prison. In a three-page deci­sion issued on November 6, 2019, 39 years after Moore was sen­tenced to death in Houston for a 1980 mur­der dur­ing a super­mar­ket rob­bery, the CCA con­ced­ed that the U.S. Supreme Court has deter­mined that​“Moore … is a person…

The pros­e­cu­tor who sent Thomas Creech, Idaho​’s longest-serv­ing death-row pris­on­er, to jail 37 years ago now says that Creech and oth­ers sen­tenced to death in the Gem State should…

Whether South Dakota death-row pris­on­er Charles Rhines (pic­tured) lives or dies may depend less on whether he was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death and more on whether the courts val­ue final­i­ty more than they val­ue fair­ness. As Rhines filed two sep­a­rate peti­tions in the U.S. Supreme Court and an appeal in the South Dakota Supreme Court on November 1, the South Dakota Department of Corrections announced that…

NEWS — November 8: Georgia death-row pris­on­er Ray Cromartie, sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed November 13, filed a motion to reopen his fed­er­al habeas cor­pus pro­ceed­ings based upon new evi­dence of inno­cence. Cromartie’s motion con­tains an affi­davit from his co-defen­­dant — pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness, Thaddeus Lucas — that a sec­ond co-defen­­dant, Corey Clark, had admit­ted to hav­ing shot Richard Slysz dur­ing the rob­bery of a con­ve­nience store. Cromartie was sentenced…

Ten exe­cu­tions were sched­uled to take place in October 2019, more than in any oth­er month in the last two years. As the month closed, how­ev­er, nine of those exe­cu­tions were not car­ried out. The 90% rate of war­rant fail­ures sym­bol­izes the death penalty’s con­tin­u­ing decline and the wide­spread prob­lems states are hav­ing with its imple­men­ta­tion. And with eight active exe­cu­tion dates pend­ing and two oth­er stays of exe­cu­tion in place in November and December, 2019 is…

Three U.S. exe­cu­tions were halt­ed on October 30, 2019, as the Georgia Supreme Court issued a day-of-exe­cu­­tion stay to Ray Jefferson Cromartie and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (pic­tured) grant­ed war­rants of reprieve to the next two death-row pris­on­ers sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Ohio. The actions capped a tumul­tuous October in which nine of ten sched­uled exe­cu­tions did not take place and federal…

When Attorney General William Barr announced in July 2019 that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment planned to exe­cute five pris­on­ers in a five-week span from December 9, 2019 to January 15, 2020, he declared that​“we owe it to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies to car­ry for­ward the sen­tence imposed by our jus­tice sys­tem.” In at least two of those cas­es, how­ev­er, the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ty have said they don’t want the death…

More than 250 con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers from across the coun­try have signed on to a state­ment express­ing their oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as admin­is­tered across the United States and issued a​“call [to] our fel­low con­ser­v­a­tives to reex­am­ine the death penal­ty and demon­strate the lead­er­ship need­ed to end this failed pol­i­cy.” Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP) released the state­ment in con­junc­tion with an October 28, 2019…

Supported by the mur­der victim’s daugh­ter, a Georgia death-row pris­on­er who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion October 30, 2019 is ask­ing the fed­er­al courts to grant him a stay to per­mit DNA test­ing that, he says, will prove that he did not com­mit the killing for which he is on death row. Ray Cromartie (pic­tured) admits his involve­ment in the rob­bery in which Richard Slysz was mur­dered, but main­tains that his co-defendant…

NEWS — October 31: The Georgia Supreme Court has over­turned the tri­al court’s grant of relief and rein­stat­ed the death sen­tences imposed on Nicholas Tate for the mur­ders of a woman and her three-year-old daugh­ter. The low­er court had ruled in 2012 that Tate had received inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion from his lawyer in the penalty phase…