Publications & Testimony

The percentage of Americans who consider the death penalty to be morally acceptable has fallen to a record-low, a new national poll by the Gallup organization has found. According to the 2020 Gallup Values and Beliefs poll, released on June 23, 2020, 54% of U.S. adults now say the death penalty is morally acceptable. (Click here to see history of poll results.) That number represents a six-percentage-point decline over the course of the last year and is the lowest in the 20-year history of the…

Three professional organizations and eight practitioners in the fields of neuroscience and neuropsychology have joined a Texas death-row prisoner in challenging the constitutionality of the state’s use of ​“future dangerousness” findings to impose the death penalty on defendants who were younger than age 21 at the time of their offense. Their brief, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on June 19, 2020, argues based on “[t]he great weight of scientific evidence” that predictions of whether an…

At least 1,300 prisoners have been imprisoned on U.S. death rows for more than two decades, in violation of U.S. human rights obligations, a Death Penalty Information Center report on death-row incarceration practices has found. The number represents more than half of all U.S. death-row prisoners as of January 1, 2020. Nearly one third of the prisoners whose lengthy death-row incarcerations violate their human rights are on death row in California. DPIC also found that an additional 191…

As high-profile support mounts in the campaign for clemency for death-row prisoner Julius Jones (pictured), the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has turned to the prosecutors who are seeking his execution — the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office — for advice on whether it can consider his petition at all. The question facing the board is whether Oklahoma law permits it to conduct clemency proceedings for a death-row prisoner who does not face an active death warrant. Jones’ case, which raises…

NEWS (6/​19/​20) — California: In one of the few capital trials to move forward during the COVID-19 pandemic, a San Jose jury acquitted Manuel Anthony Lopez of charges that he had raped and murdered his girlfriend’s two-year-old son. Lopez, who had been jailed four years awaiting trial, had consistently professed his innocence, and news reports said his lead defense counsel, Santa Clara County deputy public defender Michael Ogul, believed so strongly in Lopez’s innocence that he postponed his…

Utah has become the latest U.S. state to have gone more than a decade without carrying out an execution. The state last put a prisoner to death on June 18, 2010, when it executed Ronnie Gardner by firing squad. Utah joins a list of 34 states — more than two thirds of the country — that either do not have the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in at least a decade. Twenty-two states no longer authorize capital punishment. Twelve of the 28 states (42.9%) that do have the death…

By a vote of 6 – 3, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) ruling upholding the death sentence imposed on Terence Andrus (pictured). The Court held that Andrus’ counsel had provided substandard representation in the penalty-phase of his trial, and directed the TCCA to determine whether counsel’s deficient performance may have affected the jury’s sentencing decision. The unsigned decision, issued June 15, 2020, was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice…

NEWS (6/​16/​20) — Washington, D.C.: The U.S. Supreme Court has stayed the execution of Ruben Gutierrez over concerns about the refusal by the state of Texas to allow a chaplain to accompany Gutierrez in the execution chamber. The order, issued one hour before Gutierrez was scheduled to be put to death, stayed his execution pending the court’s disposition of Gutierrez’s petition to review his religious discrimination claim. Gutierrez had argued that Texas’ revocation of its prior policy of…

With a petition for review pending before the U.S. Supreme Court on the legality and constitutionality of the federal execution protocol, U.S. Attorney General William Barr on June 15, 2020 set execution dates for four federal death-row prisoners, including three who are involved in the pending case. The warrants scheduled three executions over a five-day period in July and a fourth execution in late August. No federal executions have been carried out since 2003, and the five execution dates…

Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr has filed an amicus brief supporting the grant of a new trial to Toforest Johnson (pictured, center, with family members), sentenced to death for the murder of an Alabama sheriff’s deputy. In a pleading filed in the Jefferson County Circuit Court, Carr wrote that, ​“A prosecutor’s duty is not merely to secure convictions, but to seek justice,” and that duty, he said, ​“requires intervention in this case” on Johnson’s behalf. Carr urged that ​“a court…