Publications & Testimony

In the latest episode of Discussions With DPIC, David Fathi, the director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, speaks with DPIC’s Managing Director Anne Holsinger about death-row conditions across the country. Fathi speaks about the “shattering” effects of long-term death-row solitary confinement, the movement away from automatic solitary confinement for death row prisoners, and the impact of COVID-19 in congregate-living circumstances, such as death-row. Fathi and Holsinger discuss the…

NEWS (7/17/20) — Arizona: Former Maricopa County homicide prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has repeatedly been cited for misconduct in death-penalty prosecutions, has been disbarred. Martinez consented to the action by the State Bar of Arizona, avoiding a public hearing on multiple charges of sexually harassing female co-workers in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. The disbarment trial was also expected to include evidence that, during the high-profile capital murder trial of Jodi Arias…

NEWS (7/17/20) — Tennessee: Citing coronavirus concerns, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has is a reprieve postponing the scheduled August 4, 2020 execution of Harold Nichols. In a statement to the media, Lee said he granted Nichols a “temporary reprieve from execution until December 31, 2020, due to the challenges and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Nichols’ execution is the third halted in Tennessee as a result of the pandemic. The Tennessee Supreme Court previously stayed Oscar…

The United States government carried out its third execution in four days on July 17, 2020, executing Dustin Honken (pictured). The week’s executions doubled the number of prisoners the government has put to death since Congress reauthorized the federal death penalty in 1988. With overnight U.S. Supreme Court rulings vacating injunctions that would have halted the July 14 and 16 executions of Daniel Lee and Wesley Purkey, few legal avenues had remained for Honken to challenge his execution.

For the second time in three days, the United States government has executed a prisoner after a 5 – 4 overnight decision of the U.S. Supreme Court short-circuited judicial review of significant legal claims and after the original death warrant setting his execution date had expired. Wesley Ira Purkey was executed at the United States Penitentiary Terre Haute and pronounced dead at 8:19 a.m. on July 16, 2020, more than 15 hours after the time the Federal Bureau of Prisons had set for a scheduled…

Lawyers for Wesley Purkey (pictured), the second of three federal death-row prisoners scheduled to be executed during the week of July 13, are seeking to halt his execution, arguing that mental illness and dementia have left him mentally incompetent. As Purkey challenges the constitutionality of his execution, his spiritual advisor, Rev. Dale Hartkemeyer, is seeking to move back the execution until the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. Hartkemeyer’s lawsuit asserts that conducting the execution…

The U.S. federal government ended its 17-year hiatus between executions on July 14, 2020, putting Daniel Lewis Lee (pictured) to death moments after overnight rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated prior court orders that had placed the execution on hold. Two more executions are scheduled this week, with a fourth set for August. Although Lee’s death warrant expired at midnight on July 13, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) attempted to…

As the U.S. Department of Justice seeks to resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus, the government’s rushed timeframe, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and unresolved issues involving the lethal-injection protocol, and the victims’ family’s rights have combined with alleged constitutional violations in the cases of the three prisoners slated for execution this week to produce a chaotic whirlwind of last-minute litigation. Federal courts facing compressed timelines have issued rulings…

NEWS (7/9/20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court upheld the conviction and death sentence of Troy Merck, Jr. Merck had argued that his lawyer had unconstitutionally conceded his guilt over Merck’s objection. The court said there was no concession. According to the decision, “Merck argued that his conviction violates the Sixth Amendment pursuant to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in McCoy v. Louisiana … because his appointed trial counsel refused to abide by Merck’s asserted…

Last Updated: January 16, 2021 1:35am. January 2021 Scheduled Executions The federal government has rescheduled the execution of Lisa Montgomery for January 12^th and scheduled the executions of Corey Johnson (January 14^th) and Dustin Higgs (January 15^th) for the same week. Prisoner Coronavirus Litigation Federal prisoners Patrick R. Smith and Brandon S. Holm filed a class-action lawsuit in an Indiana federal district court on November 25^th to halt the December 2020 federal executions. The…