Publications & Testimony

Facing a May 16, 2019 exe­cu­tion date, Alabama death-row pris­on­er Michael Brandon Samra (pic­tured) has asked the United States Supreme Court and Governor Kay Ivey to halt his exe­cu­tion and for the Court to con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly of impos­ing the death penal­ty upon 19-year-old offend­ers. In a peti­tion filed on April 27, Samra — a teenage offend­er with bor­der­line intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing — asked the U.S. Supreme Court to…

Proponents of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have long argued for the death penal­ty on the grounds that it brings clo­sure to fam­i­ly mem­bers of homi­cide vic­tims. But sci­ence sug­gests that achiev­ing clo­sure through exe­cu­tion may be a myth, says fam­i­ly and child ther­a­pist Linda Lewis Griffith (pic­tured) in a May 6, 2019 col­umn in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment may actu­al­ly make matters…

A new study of Louisiana​’s death penal­ty reports that the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem costs tax­pay­ers at least $15.6 mil­lion a year more than a sys­tem with life with­out parole as the max­i­mum sen­tence. The study by retired New Orleans dis­trict Chief Judge Calvin Johnson (pic­tured, left) and Loyola Law Professor William Quigley (pic­tured, right), released on May 2, 2019, found that Louisiana has spent more than $200 mil­lion on its…

A fed­er­al appeals court has declared that Virginia for many years housed its death-row pris­on­ers in uncon­sti­tu­tion­al con­di­tions and has barred the state from revert­ing to its pri­or prac­tices. On May 3, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the Commonwealth’s for­mer pol­i­cy of 23- or 24-hour per day soli­tary con­fine­ment of death-row pris­on­ers con­sti­tut­ed cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. The 2 – 1 deci­sion upheld a rul­ing by the U.S.

A two-week fed­er­al tri­al on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Arkansas​’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col came to a close May 2, 2019, as the par­ties pre­sent­ed legal argu­ments to the court after eight days of tes­ti­mo­ny. U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker must now deter­mine whether the state’s three-drug pro­to­col begin­ning with the seda­tive mida­zo­lam is allow­able. Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing a group of death-row pris­on­ers pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from wit­ness­es of recent exe­cu­tions, as well as medical…

Sometimes you need a joke about a cute but very angry desert rain frog to pre­pare an unsus­pect­ing audi­ence for a seri­ous dis­cus­sion of lethal-injec­tion exe­cu­tions in the United States. That was the approach under­tak­en by Last Week Tonight, the satir­i­cal week­ly HBO com­e­dy-news show host­ed by John Oliver, as Oliver addressed the dead­ly seri­ous issue of lethal injec­tion in the show’s May 5, 2019 episode. Oliver called the death penal­ty ​“a wrong, bad…

A Texas tri­al court judge has for­mal­ly declared Alfred Dewayne Brown (pic­tured) ​“actu­al­ly inno­cent” of the mur­der charges that led to his wrong­ful con­vic­tion and death sen­tence in 2005. The order, issued on May 3, 2019 by Harris County District Court Judge George Powell, paves the way for Brown to receive com­pen­sa­tion from the state for the ten years he was wrong­ful­ly incar­cer­at­ed on death row for the killing of a Houston police…

For the sec­ond time in as many years, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu (pic­tured, left) has vetoed a bill to repeal the state’s death penal­ty. Sununu’s action on May 3, 2019 sets the stage for an antic­i­pat­ed attempt lat­er in the leg­isla­tive ses­sion to over­ride the Governor’s veto. A two-thirds vote in each house is required to…

Tennessee exe­cut­ed Sedley Alley in 2006 for the bru­tal rape and mur­der of Marine Lance Corporal Suzanne Collins, after hav­ing denied him DNA test­ing that his lawyers believed could have estab­lished his inno­cence. Now, after new evi­dence sug­gests that anoth­er man may have com­mit­ted the mur­der, the Innocence Project has filed a peti­tion in Shelby County (Memphis) Criminal Court on behalf of Alley’s estate renew­ing Alley’s…

Christian church lead­ers from Catholic and Protestant denom­i­na­tions across Louisiana have called upon state law­mak­ers to pass leg­is­la­tion to end the death penal­ty in the Bayou State. On April 25, 2019, the Louisiana Interchurch Conference and two dozen faith rep­re­sen­ta­tives held a press con­fer­ence on the steps of the state capi­tol in Baton Rouge advo­cat­ing for leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law and pledg­ing their sup­port for as long as it takes for abo­li­tion efforts to…