Publications & Testimony
Items: 131 — 140
May 28, 2024
Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals Categorically Bars Review of Racial Bias in Capital Jury Selection
On May 3, 2024, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals announced its decision in the case of Christopher Henderson, a death-sentenced man who had been tried by an all-white jury in Madison County, Alabama, where the population is 24.6% Black. Prosecutors in his capital trial used peremptory strikes to remove six of the 10 qualified Black potential jurors and all remaining jurors of color. Mr. Henderson’s counsel from the Equal Justice Initiative identified evidence that the prosecutor’s…
Read MoreMay 24, 2024
Article of Interest: Retired Supervising Detective Says There Was No Crime in Robert Roberson’s Case
In a May 23, 2024 op-ed published in The Dallas Morning News, Brian Wharton, the retired supervising detective in Robert Roberson’s case, urged Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell to reexamine the case and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reexamine a pending motion on Mr. Roberson’s innocence claims, which have previously been denied. “It would be a terrible legacy for all of us to be associated with executing an innocent man based on a rush to judgment and…
Read MoreMay 22, 2024
Family of Youngest Person Executed in Pennsylvania History Sues County for His Wrongful Conviction and Execution 93 Years Ago
Susie Williams Carter was just a baby when her 16-year-old brother, Alexander McClay Williams, was convicted of murder and executed in Pennsylvania in 1931. Over 90 years later, Ms. Carter, now 94, continues her family’s determination to clear her brother’s name. In June 2022, a Delaware County, Pennsylvania judge agreed that law enforcement had disregarded evidence and coerced Mr. Williams into signing multiple false confessions. All charges against Mr. Williams were posthumously dismissed…
Read MoreMay 21, 2024
Alabama District Attorney Files Amicus Brief in Support of New Trial for Toforest Johnson
On May 20, 2024, Jefferson County, Alabama District Attorney Danny Carr asked a circuit judge to grant a new trial to Toforest Johnson (center), an Alabama death row prisoner whose conviction DA Carr believes is “fundamentally unreliable.” This extraordinary request is the latest in a series of appeals for Mr. Johnson, who was sentenced to death in 1998 for the 1995 murder of Jefferson County Deputy Sheriff William Hardy but has always maintained his innocence. “A thorough review and…
Read MoreMay 20, 2024
NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Most Recent Report Confirms Continued Decline of Death Row Population
As of October 2023, the number of people in the United States sentenced to death or facing the possibility of a death sentence continued its more than two-decade decline, according to the latest report issued by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund…
Read MoreMay 17, 2024
Tennessee Authorizes Death Penalty for Child Sexual Assault in Direct Challenge to Supreme Court Precedent
On May 9, Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee signed a bill authorizing the death penalty for aggravated rape of a child, following Florida’s passage of a similar law last year. Both laws contradict longstanding Supreme Court precedent holding the death penalty unconstitutional for non-homicide crimes. Tennessee’s law takes effect on July 1. The state has had a death penalty moratorium in place since May 2022 after Governor Lee learned that state officials had failed to test execution drugs for…
Read MoreMay 16, 2024
New DPIC Report Traces Ohio’s History of Racial Violence to the Modern Use of Capital Punishment in the State
On Tuesday, the Death Penalty Information Center released a new report that connects Ohio’s racial history to the modern use of the death penalty in the state. Broken Promises: How a History of Racial Violence and Bias Shaped Ohio’s Death Penalty documents how racial discrimination is the throughline that runs from the state’s founding to its application of capital punishment…
Read MoreMay 15, 2024
“I Just Wanted…to Stay Alive”: Who was William Henry Furman, the Prisoner at the Center of a Historic Legal Decision?
Furman v. Georgia was one of the most monumental cases in American legal history: the 1972 decision overturned every state death penalty statute in the country and spared the lives of nearly six hundred people sentenced to die. But the lead petitioner, William Henry Furman, was little aware of his impact. Poor, Black, mentally ill, and physically and intellectually disabled, he was sentenced to death for the killing of a homeowner during a botched robbery, which he maintains was…
Read MoreMay 13, 2024
Oklahoma Judge Finds Wade Lay Mentally Incompetent to Be Executed
Oklahoma prisoner Wade Lay (pictured) will not be executed on June 6, 2024 as scheduled because a Pittsburg County judge has found him mentally incompetent to be executed. “The available evidence demonstrates, by a preponderance or greater weight of the evidence, that Mr. Lay is currently incompetent to be executed according to the governing legal standards,” Judge Tim Mills wrote. Defense and state experts who examined Mr. Lay found that, due to his schizophrenia, delusions, and paranoia, he…
Read MoreMay 10, 2024
Oklahoma Court Modifies Execution Scheduling Process, Granting Attorney General’s Request to Extend the Interval Between Executions But Choosing to Set Execution Dates Individually
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled on May 7 to extend the interval between executions to occur approximately 90-days apart, specifying that executions should be scheduled for Thursdays, and that the Department of Corrections must be provided notice at least 35 days in advance. The Court also denied the Attorney General’s motion to set execution dates for groups of prisoners, as has been done in the past, instead choosing to schedule executions…
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