Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has stayed the exe­cu­tion of Texas death-row pris­on­er Dexter Darnell Johnson one day before he was sched­uled to die. The rul­ing, issued late in the day on August 14, 2019, per­mits Johnson to lit­i­gate his claim that he is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The stay marked the sec­ond time in four months that fed­er­al courts inter­vened in Johnson’s case to halt a looming…

The high cost of meet­ing its oblig­a­tion to pro­vide con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-man­dat­ed effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion for indi­gent defen­dants in cap­i­tal cas­es con­tin­ues to gen­er­ate con­tro­ver­sy in Utah​’s fourth largest coun­ty. With two cap­i­tal tri­als pend­ing and a lengthy post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ing under­way on whether a court-appoint­ed lawyer in a third cap­i­tal case pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that Weber County is facing bills…

Sister Helen Prejean, the acclaimed author of Dead Man Walking, has writ­ten a new spir­i­tu­al mem­oir, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey. The book, released August 13, 2019 by Random House pub­lish­ers, tells the sto­ry of her spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment from join­ing the Congregation of St. Joseph at age 18 to becom­ing a lead­ing voice in the move­ment to abol­ish the death…

Advocates from a vari­ety of back­grounds are urg­ing Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to stop the August 15, 2019 exe­cu­tion of Stephen West (pic­tured), say­ing that West did not com­mit the mur­der and urg­ing the gov­er­nor not to exe­cute a man who is severe­ly men­tal­ly ill. [UPDATE: Governor Lee denied clemen­cy and West was exe­cut­ed on August…

NEWS — August 15: Tennessee has exe­cut­ed Stephen Michael West after Governor Bill Lee denied his peti­tion for clemen­cy. West was the eleventh per­son exe­cut­ed in the United States in 2019 and the sec­ond in Tennessee. He was the first exe­cu­tion by elec­tric chair this year. 1,501 pris­on­ers have been exe­cut­ed in the United States since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment resumed in the 1970s. Tennessee has car­ried out 11 exe­cu­tions in that peri­od, five of them since August…

A Dallas, Texas, coun­ty com­mis­sion­er has called for a two-year halt on death-penal­ty tri­als, say­ing it would give the coun­ty time to study the finan­cial and eth­i­cal costs of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. On August 6, 2019, Commissioner J.J. Koch (pic­tured) pro­posed a coun­ty mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions, with cost sav­ings from not pur­su­ing the death penal­ty redi­rect­ed toward inves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing human traf­fick­ing cas­es. The pro­pos­al was notable coming in…

Oklahoma​’s prac­tice of auto­mat­i­cal­ly hous­ing death-row pris­on­ers in soli­tary con­fine­ment and deny­ing them com­mu­nal reli­gious ser­vices is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and inhu­mane, a coali­tion of nation­al and local civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions says. In a July 29, 2019 let­ter to inter­im Oklahoma Department of Corrections (ODOC) direc­tor Scott Crow, the coali­tion — head­ed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma—report­ed that its two-year inves­ti­ga­tion into the state’s…

Following the trends across most of the Midwest, the death penal­ty is wan­ing in Indiana. Capital pros­e­cu­tions are down, no jury has vot­ed for death since 2013, and the state is clos­ing in on its tenth con­sec­u­tive year with­out an exe­cu­tion. An August 4, 2019 Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette review of the death penal­ty in the state reports that even high-pro­file mur­ders that start­ed out as death-penal­ty cas­es have recent­ly been resolved with non-capital…

A fed­er­al appeals court has cleared the way for a civ­il law­suit by two North Carolina death-row exonerees to advance to tri­al, reject­ing a claim that police offi­cers who alleged­ly vio­lat­ed their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were immune from lia­bil­i­ty. On July 31, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a tri­al court rul­ing allow­ing Henry McCollum (pic­tured, left) and Leon Brown (pic­tured, right) to sue North Carolina…

A for­mer high-rank­ing fed­er­al cor­rec­tions offi­cial has warned that the fed­er­al government’s plan to exe­cute five pris­on­ers over a five-week peri­od in December and January risks seri­ous­ly trau­ma­tiz­ing cor­rec­tion­al work­ers. Allen Ault (pic­tured) is a for­mer chief of the Justice Department’s National Institute of Corrections who also served as cor­rec­tions com­mis­sion­er in Georgia, Mississippi, and Colorado, and as chair­man of the Florida Department of Corrections. In a July 31, 2019 op-ed in…