Publications & Testimony

A fed­er­al appeals court has found 80-year-old Charles Ray Finch (pic­tured) ​“actu­al­ly inno­cent” of the mur­der for which he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in North Carolina 42 years ago. The pro­nounce­ment came in a unan­i­mous rul­ing issued by a three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on January 25, 2019. In that deci­sion, Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory wrote that ​“Finch has over­come the exact­ing stan­dard for actu­al innocence…

Texas exe­cut­ed Robert Jennings (pic­tured) on January 30, 2019 for the 1988 mur­der of Houston police offi­cer Elston Howard, amid ques­tions as to his eli­gi­bil­i­ty for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of his death sen­tence. Jennings was con­vict­ed under a sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down short­ly before his tri­al in 1989 because it did not ade­quate­ly allow jurors to con­sid­er evi­dence sup­port­ing a sen­tence less than death.

Stephen Curry (pic­tured, right, dur­ing a 2015 vis­it to the White House), star of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and exec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary Emanuel, has pub­licly voiced his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. Emanuel tells the sto­ry of the mur­der of nine Black mem­bers of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina by white suprema­cist Dylann Roof. It is…

The Missouri Supreme Court may soon rule on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s prac­tice of hav­ing the tri­al judge deter­mine whether a cap­i­tal defen­dant should live or die if the sen­tenc­ing jury is unable to reach a unan­i­mous ver­dict. Death-row pris­on­er Marvin Rice (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to death by the tri­al judge in August 2017, even though 11 of the 12 jurors in his case vot­ed for a life sen­tence. His appeal, which the state court heard on January 23,…

Citing a fed­er­al court’s con­cerns that Ohio’s lethal-injec­tion process is unnec­es­sar­i­ly tor­tur­ous, new­ly inau­gu­rat­ed Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured, left) has issued a six-month reprieve to death-row pris­on­er Warren Keith Henness (pic­tured, right), delay­ing his exe­cu­tion from February 13 to September 12, 2019. In grant­i­ng the reprieve, DeWine also direct­ed the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to review Ohio’s pos­si­ble alter­na­tive drugs to…

Charles Wright (pic­tured), a pris­on­er on Tennessee’s death row, may die of can­cer before the October 10, 2019 exe­cu­tion date that the state has set for him. His attor­neys and sup­port­ers, includ­ing a for­mer U.S. Congressman, are seek­ing clemen­cy so Wright can spend his final days with his fam­i­ly. Wright has prostate can­cer that has spread to his bones, and was recent­ly moved from Tennessee’s death-row facil­i­ty to a prison infir­mary. He is ask­ing the governor…

The United States Supreme Court has declined to review chal­lenges brought by two Oklahoma death-row pris­on­ers who alleged that their death sen­tences were the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al prod­uct of racial bias. Julius Jones and Tremane Wood had sought to over­turn their death sen­tences based on the find­ings of a 2017 study that showed sig­nif­i­cant racial dis­par­i­ties in Oklahoma’s death sen­tenc­ing prac­tices. On January 22, 2019, the Court denied the…

A bipar­ti­san coali­tion of Wyoming leg­is­la­tors has intro­duced a bill to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty. On January 15, 2019, Cheyenne Republican State Representative Jared Olsen (pic­tured, left) and Republican State Senator Brian Boner (pic­tured, right), intro­duced HB145, which would repeal the death penal­ty and replace it with a judi­cial­ly imposed sen­tence of life with­out parole or life impris­on­ment. The bill, co-spon­sored by six­teen other…

By a vote of 23 – 17, the Virginia State Senate has approved a bill that, if enact­ed, would ban cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for defen­dants with severe men­tal ill­ness. With the sup­port of all nine­teen Democratic sen­a­tors and four Republicans, the bill passed the GOP-con­trolled Senate on January 17, 2019. It now moves on to the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates, which is com­prised of 51 Republicans and 49…