Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the unseal­ing of court doc­u­ments relat­ed to Alabama​’s May 30, 2019 exe­cu­tion of Christopher Price. On June 24, the Court grant­ed a motion filed by National Public Radio (NPR) and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), to unseal all Supreme Court plead­ings in the case of Price v. Dunn, in which — based on redact­ed fil­ings — the Court per­mit­ted Price’s execution to…

When Georgia exe­cut­ed Marion Wilson, Jr., on June 20, 2019, it marked the 1500^th exe­cu­tion in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all death-penal­ty statutes in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, then four years lat­er per­mit­ted exe­cu­tions to go for­ward under new statutes osten­si­bly enact­ed to address the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al arbi­trari­ness that had plagued the old laws. His exe­cu­tion, ana­lysts say, reflects a number of…

NEWS: JUNE 28—The New Mexico Supreme Court has over­turned the death sen­tences of the two pris­on­ers who had remained on the state’s death row after the leg­is­la­ture repealed the state’s death-penal­ty statute in 2009. In 3 – 2 deci­sions in Fry v. Lopez and Allen v. Lemaster, the court found that the death sen­tences imposed on Robert Fry and Timothy Allen were dis­pro­por­tion­ate to ​“oth­er equal­ly hor­ren­dous cases in…

Finding that a Mississippi pros­e­cu­tor had inten­tion­al­ly struck black jurors in an attempt to empan­el as white a jury as pos­si­ble, the United States Supreme Court has over­turned the con­vic­tion of death-row pris­on­er Curtis Giovanni Flowers. The Court’s 7 – 2 deci­sion on June 21, 2019, found that Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District Attorney Doug Evans had under­tak­en extra­or­di­nary efforts to pre­vent African Americans from serv­ing as jurors…

In a 7 – 2 deci­sion, the Supreme Court over­turned the con­vic­tion of Curtis Giovanni Flowers, a Mississippi death row pris­on­er who has been tried six times for a noto­ri­ous 1996 quadru­ple mur­der in Winona, Mississippi. Three of the first five tri­als end­ed in con­vic­tions that were over­turned on appeal and two tri­als result­ed in hung juries. The lead pros­e­cu­tor for all six tri­als was Doug Evans, the District Attorney in Mississippi’s Fifth…

A Kentucky cap­i­tal defen­dant has moved to dis­miss all charges against him or to bar the death penal­ty in his case as a result of evi­dence that pros­e­cu­tors repeat­ed­ly eaves­dropped on priv­i­leged attor­ney-client tele­phone calls over the span of a year. Lawyers for James Mallory (pic­tured) have filed a motion to dis­miss the case for gross pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, alleg­ing that pros­e­cu­tors lis­tened to record­ings of 120 prison phone calls between Mallory and…

A new study of the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Los Angeles has con­clud­ed that, through­out the admin­is­tra­tion of District Attorney Jackie Lacey (pic­tured) the death penal­ty has ​“discriminate[d] on the basis of race and against the poor.” The study, released June 18, 2019 by the ACLU, report­ed that under Lacey’s admin­is­tra­tion the Los Angeles death penal­ty has been imposed exclu­sive­ly against defen­dants of col­or, disproportionately for…

Arguing that Marion Wilson (pic­tured, cen­ter) did not kill any­one and did not intend that a killing occur, lawyers for the Georgia death-row pris­on­er have filed a clemen­cy peti­tion urg­ing the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to com­mute Wilson’s sen­tence to life with­out parole. The Board, which declas­si­fied Wilson’s peti­tion allow­ing it to be released to the pub­lic, is sched­uled to hold a clemen­cy hear­ing on Wednesday, June 19, 2019,…

Citing ​“egre­gious” mis­con­duct by state prison offi­cials in try­ing to evade a court order to pro­duce pub­lic records con­cern­ing its efforts to obtain lethal-injec­tion drugs, an Indiana judge has direct­ed the state’s Department of Correction to pay more than a half mil­lion dol­lars in plain­tiffs’ attor­ney fees. On June 12, 2019, Marion County Circuit Judge Sheryl Lynch (pic­tured) award­ed $538,000 in attor­ney fees to plain­tiffs who were seeking…

NEWS (6/​20): Georgia’s exe­cu­tion of Marion Wilson was the 1,500^th exe­cu­tion in the United States and the 74^th in Georgia since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of new death-penal­ty laws in 1976. It was the 10^th exe­cu­tion in the U.S. in 2019 and the sec­ond in Georgia. 82% of all exe­cu­tions in the United States since the 1970s — and every exe­cu­tion so far in 2019 — have been in the South. See…