Publications & Testimony

A sec­ond Muslim death-row pris­on­er has filed a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit chal­leng­ing Alabama​’s pol­i­cy of allow­ing only a Protestant Christian chap­lain in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. Charles Burton, Jr. (pic­tured), con­vert­ed to Islam 47 years ago. In a com­plaint filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Burton, who was sen­tenced to death in 1992, argues that Alabama’s pol­i­cy vio­lates the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses…

A civil­ian fed­er­al appeals court has dealt anoth­er blow to the Guantánamo mil­i­tary com­mis­sion death-penal­ty pro­ceed­ings, strik­ing more than two years of deci­sions in the USS Cole bomb­ing pros­e­cu­tion of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Al-Nashiri because of a mil­i­tary judge’s undis­closed con­flict of inter­est. Al-Nashiri faces cap­i­tal charges for his alleged role in the sui­cide bomb­ing attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000 in which 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a South Dakota death-row pris­on­er whose jurors made anti-gay state­ments and relied on homo­pho­bic beliefs in decid­ing to sen­tence him to death. On April 15, 2019, the Court with­out com­ment denied a peti­tion filed by Charles Rhines (pic­tured) ask­ing the Court to declare that the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an impar­tial jury applies equal­ly to bias against a defendant’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. In…

In a con­tentious rul­ing issued in the ear­ly morn­ing hours of April 12, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion issued by low­er fed­er­al courts and cleared the way for Alabama to exe­cute Christopher Price (pic­tured). The Court’s 5 – 4 deci­sion, issued after 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, came after Alabama had post­poned Price’s exe­cu­tion min­utes before the mid­night Central time expi­ra­tion of his death war­rant, with the low­er court stay…

In a vote death-penal­ty oppo­nents praised as ​“his­toric,” a veto-proof super­ma­jor­i­ty of the New Hampshire leg­is­la­ture gave final approval to a bill that would repeal the state’s death penal­ty statute. By a vote of 17 – 6, the sen­a­tors vot­ed on April 11, 2019 to end cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions in the Granite State, exceed­ing the two-thirds major­i­ty nec­es­sary to over­ride an antic­i­pat­ed veto by Governor Chris Sununu. In March, the state House of Representatives passed the same abolition…

The Missouri Supreme Court has ordered a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al for Marvin D. Rice (pic­tured), a for­mer sheriff’s deputy whose tri­al judge sen­tenced him to death despite the votes of 11 of his 12 jurors to sen­tence him to life. On April 2, 2019, the court vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed by St. Charles County Judge Kelly Wayne Parker in 2017 under the state’s con­tro­ver­sial ​“hung jury” sen­tenc­ing pro­vi­sion. Under that law, the tri­al judge has…

Executions world­wide have fall­en to their low­est lev­els in a decade, accord­ing to a new report released April 9, 2019 by Amnesty…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the exe­cu­tion of Mark Robertson (pic­tured), a Dallas death-row pris­on­er whom Texas had sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on April 11, 2019. The court’s April 8 stay order did not spec­i­fy the rea­son it halt­ed the exe­cu­tion, but Robertson’s lawyers had filed an appeal seek­ing review of their claim that his court-appoint­ed tri­al lawyer, Michael Byck, had ​“engaged in pur­pose­ful dis­crim­i­na­tion” by deliberately…

A Tennessee mur­der victim’s daugh­ter is ask­ing Governor Bill Lee to hon­or their shared faith by spar­ing the life of her mother’s killer. In what they describe as an ​“excep­tion­al” clemen­cy plea, lawyers for Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Don Johnson (pic­tured) write that Cynthia Vaughn, the daugh­ter of Connie Johnson, has request­ed a meet­ing with Gov. Lee to tell him her sto­ry of ​“Christian for­give­ness” and ask that he com­mute Johnson’s sentence…

Legal schol­ars and com­men­ta­tors across the polit­i­cal spec­trum have crit­i­cized the U.S. Supreme Court for its seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry actions, less than two months apart, in two near­ly iden­ti­cal reli­gious free­dom claims from death-row pris­on­ers. On February 7, 2019, the Court vacat­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion and per­mit­ted Alabama to exe­cute death-row pris­on­er Domineque Ray (pic­tured, left), who had claimed that the Alabama Department of Corrections…