Publications & Testimony

In the sec­ond and third videos of The New York Times’ three-part series,​“The Fallibility of Justice,” Brett Malone, whose mother’s killer remains on Louisiana death row, and Texas death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Charles Don Flores pro­vide their per­spec­tives on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The New York Times has con­sis­tent­ly called for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, describ­ing it as​“full of bias and error, moral­ly abhor­rent, [and] futile in deterring…

Maryland GovPics, CC BY 2.0 <https://​cre​ativecom​mons​.org/​l​i​c​e​n​s​e​s​/​b​y/2.0>, via Wikimedia…

30-year-old German nation­al Rico Krieger, who was sen­tenced to death on six charges relat­ed to ter­ror­ism, espi­onage, and mer­ce­nary activ­i­ty, was par­doned by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on July 30, 2024, there­by con­vert­ing his death sen­tence to a life prison term. On August 1, Mr. Krieger was sub­se­quent­ly released dur­ing the largest pris­on­er exchange since the Cold War, accord­ing to The Guardian. Eight Russian pris­on­ers were released from Western…

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Leah Roemer, DPIC’s Legal Fellow and a pri­ma­ry author of our recent report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty. Leah grad­u­at­ed from Berkeley Law in 2023, where she par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Death Penalty Clinic and earned a cer­tifi­cate in Public Interest and Social Justice. Leah dis­cuss­es how some judges,…

A July 2024 report from the Texas Defender Service (TDS), An Unfulfilled Promise: Assessing the Efficacy of 11.073, the first-ever com­pre­hen­sive review of Texas’ junk sci­ence writ, revealed that the​“law sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly fails to pro­vide relief to inno­cent peo­ple con­vict­ed based on false foren­sic evi­dence.” In 2013, the Texas Legislature passed a first-of-its-kind law, Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Article 11.073, cre­at­ing a pro­ce­dur­al path­way for convicted…

Disability…

UPDATE: On August 2^nd, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin revoked the July 31, 2024 plea agree­ment reached between mil­i­tary com­mis­sions pros­e­cu­tors and defense coun­sel for three of the 9/​11 defen­dants being held at Guantanamo. In a two-para­­graph memo, Secretary Austin revoked the author­i­ty of Susan Escallier, the head of the Military Commissions Convening Authority, to enter into the plea agree­ments and reserved that author­i­ty for him­self. This unexpected…

On July 26, 2024, the Missouri Supreme Court denied Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s request to block an evi­den­tiary hear­ing sched­uled for August 21^st, 2024, where the St. Louis County Circuit Court is set to hear evi­dence of Marcellus Williams’ (pic­tured) inno­cence. The cir­cuit court set the August 21^st hear­ing in response to a motion to vacate Mr. Williams’ con­vic­tion and death sen­tence filed by Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell in January 2024. In his motion, DA Bell wrote that…

Robert Roberson with daugh­ter Nikki. Courtesy of the…

With Utah prepar­ing for its first exe­cu­tion in 14 years, one of the state’s lead­ing news­pa­pers has issued a call not only to spare Taberon Honie, the pris­on­er set for exe­cu­tion on August 8, 2024, but to end the prac­tice of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment alto­geth­er. In a July 25 edi­to­r­i­al, the Salt Lake Tribune high­lights Mr. Honie’s abu­sive upbring­ing and his sin­cere remorse for the crime, say­ing his case for clemen­cy​“is strong.” The day after the editorial was…