Publications & Testimony

NEWS: Texas and Florida car­ried out the 12^th and 13^th U.S. exe­cu­tions in 2019 on August 21 and August 22. They were the fourth exe­cu­tion in Texas and the second in…

A life sen­tence recent­ly imposed in America’s dead­liest death-penal­­ty coun­ty illus­trates the impact of Alabama​’s 2017 repeal of its for­mer law per­mit­ting tri­al judges to impose the death penal­ty despite jury votes for life. On August 9, 2019, Houston County Judge Larry Anderson sen­tenced Nathaniel Dennis to life in prison with­out parole for the mur­der of a con­ve­nience store clerk, after the jury in his case recommended…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…