Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to grant a new tri­al to Curtis Flowers (pic­tured), an African-American death-row pris­on­er tried six times for the same mur­ders by a white Mississippi pros­e­cu­tor who struck near­ly every black juror from ser­vice in each of the tri­als. During oral argu­ment in Flowers v. Mississippi on March 20, 2019, eight jus­tices expressed con­cern that Flowers had been denied a fair tri­al as a…

In a vic­to­ry for the media and advo­cates of open gov­ern­ment, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on March 18, 2019 that Alabama must dis­close key por­tions of its high­ly secre­tive lethal-injec­tion exe­cu­tion pro­to­col to the pub­lic. The Associated Press, the Montgomery Advertiser, and Alabama Media Group had sued for access to the pro­to­col, which came under intense scruti­ny in the wake of Alabama’s failed attempt to execute…

For the sec­ond time in just over one month, the United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for the exe­cu­tion of an African-American pris­on­er in the face of strong evi­dence of racial or reli­gious bias. On March 18, 2019, the Court unan­i­mous­ly declined to hear an appeal from Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured), who argued his death sen­tence was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly taint­ed by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of racist white juror who called…

Beth Kissileff (pic­tured), a writer and the wife of a rab­bi who sur­vived the shoot­ing ram­page that killed eleven wor­ship­pers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life syn­a­gogue, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice not to seek the death penal­ty against the man charged with com­mit­ting those mur­ders. In an opin­ion arti­cle for the Religion News Service, Kissileff wrote that she and her hus­band, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman of Pittsburgh’s New Light Congregation, engaged fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors and a social worker…

Two pros­e­cu­tors with dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tives on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have called on their respec­tive states to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Boulder County, Colorado, District Attorney Michael Dougherty (pic­tured, left), who oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in prin­ci­ple, and for­mer Washoe County, Nevada, homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor Thomas E. Viloria (pic­tured, right), who has suc­cess­ful­ly obtained four death ver­dicts, have added their voic­es to sup­port efforts to…

On June 21, 2019, the United States Supreme Court vacat­ed Curtis Flowers’ con­vic­tion in a 7 – 2 deci­sion. For more infor­ma­tion about the opin­ion, read DPIC’s sum­ma­ry here. See also Supreme Court Vacates Conviction in Mississippi Death Penalty Case Finding Race Discrimination in Jury…

In October 2018, the Washington Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly struck down the state’s death penal­ty, find­ing that it had been ​“imposed in an arbi­trary and racial­ly biased man­ner.” In reach­ing its deci­sion in State v. Gregory, the court relied upon a study of twen­ty-five years of Washington State cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions that demon­strat­ed that Washington juries were 4.5 times more like­ly to impose a death sen­tence on a black…

California Governor Gavin Newsom on March 13, 2019 declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state with the nation’s largest death row. Newsom imple­ment­ed the mora­to­ri­um through an exec­u­tive order grant­i­ng reprieves to the 737 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on California’s death row. He also announced that he was with­draw­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col — the admin­is­tra­tive plan by which exe­cu­tions are car­ried out — and was clos­ing down the state’s exe­cu­tion cham­ber. In his exec­u­tive order impos­ing the…