Publications & Testimony

A prominent South Georgia prosecutor, lauded for his success in capital prosecutions, has a history of misconduct in those cases, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative report has disclosed. Longtime Brunswick Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney John B. Johnson III, who joined the five-county prosecutor’s office in 1977, “has a dark legacy of problem cases,” the paper reports, including repeatedly withholding evidence from the defense in death penalty cases. The investigative…

The U.S. government has set an August 26, 2020 execution date for the sole Native American on federal death row, against the wishes of his tribe, the victims’ family, and the local U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted the case. On July 29, 2020, the Federal Bureau of Prisons issued a notice of execution to Lezmond Mitchell, a member of the Navajo Nation convicted of the stabbing deaths of a woman and her nine-year-old granddaughter on tribal lands. If the execution is carried out, it would…

Recent police and vigilante killings of Black Americans have ignited a national call for systemic reform of law enforcement across the country, highlighting the link between extrajudicial abuse of force and widespread discriminatory application of unnecessarily harsh legal punishments against people of color. In the wake of these murders, Maryland public defender Kristina Leslie (pictured) writes, “[m]eaningful and equitable criminal justice reform … must include abolishing the death penalty.”

Nebraska may have executed Carey Dean Moore in August 2018 using drugs supplied by a pharmacy in violation of pharmaceutical manufacturers’ distribution policies, Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS) records suggest. The records show that Community Pharmacy Services, a local pharmacy based in Greta, Nebraska, provided the state with supplies of five potential execution drugs. The distribution policies of the companies that produced the medicines prohibited their sale for use in…

When Attorney General William Barr announced in July 2019 that the federal government planned to resume federal executions by putting to death Daniel Lewis Lee, the Department of Justice press release announcing the death warrants trumpeted that “we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.” But the family of Nancy Mueller (pictured) and her eight-year-old daughter Sarah Powell — murder victims in Lee’s case — had long opposed his…

NEWS (7/21 & 7/22/20) — Texas: Split panels of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit have upheld the convictions and death sentences imposed on Erica Sheppard (pictured) and Anibal Canales. The trial court had reversed Sheppard’s death sentence on grounds that her lawyer had provided ineffective assistance in the penalty phase of trial, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed, saying that counsel’s minimal presentation of mitigating evidence had not been prejudicial. The…

The Innocence Project and federal defenders have filed a motion in a Shelby County, Tennessee trial court seeking DNA testing of physical evidence hidden by prosecutors for 30 years that they believe will exonerate death-row prisoner Pervis Payne (pictured). Payne, who is scheduled to be executed on December 3, 2020, has steadfastly denied committing the crime. The lawyers argue that his conviction and death sentence are the combined product of racial bias by a prosecutor’s office with an…

After four unsuccessful attempts to impose the death penalty over the past decade and what he described as a transformative visit to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, Santa Clara County, California District Attorney Jeff Rosen (pictured) has announced that his office will no longer seek the death penalty. The announcement was the climax of a highly promoted “Bend the Arc” media briefing on July 22, 2020 at which Rosen announced a series of major social justice…

Derrick Jamison survived six death warrants during his two decades on Ohio’s death row, coming within 90 minutes of being executed. After he was exonerated, on the day he walked free, his best friend on death row was executed. His story, he writes in a July 11, 2020 op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times, “illustrates everything that is wrong with the death penalty” and why it should be abolished. Jamison (pictured) was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of a Cincinnati bartender.

Calling capital punishment a “luxury” that the state can no longer afford, Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon (pictured) told legislators that he is “very seriously” considering imposing a moratorium on the state’s rarely-used death penalty. The Casper Star-Tribune reports that the state is facing a $1.5 billion budget deficit from shortfalls caused by the coronavirus pandemic and declining revenues in the state’s energy sector. Gordon told members of the state legislature’s Joint Appropriations…