Publications & Testimony

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…

A fed­er­al appeals court has cleared the way for a civ­il law­suit by two North Carolina death-row exonerees to advance to tri­al, reject­ing a claim that police offi­cers who alleged­ly vio­lat­ed their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were immune from lia­bil­i­ty. On July 31, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a tri­al court rul­ing allow­ing Henry McCollum (pic­tured, left) and Leon Brown (pic­tured, right) to sue…

A for­mer high-rank­ing fed­er­al cor­rec­tions offi­cial has warned that the fed­er­al government’s plan to exe­cute five pris­on­ers over a five-week peri­od in December and January risks seri­ous­ly trau­ma­tiz­ing cor­rec­tion­al work­ers. Allen Ault (pic­tured) is a for­mer chief of the Justice Department’s National Institute of Corrections who also served as cor­rec­tions com­mis­sion­er in Georgia, Mississippi, and Colorado, and as chair­man of the Florida Department of Corrections. In…

NEWS — August 9: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld a California fed­er­al dis­trict court’s denial of Steven Livaditis​’s habeas cor­pus peti­tion chal­leng­ing his cap­i­tal con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. The court ruled that U.S. Supreme Court caselaw barred it from con­sid­er­ing mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the fed­er­al dis­trict court in sup­port of Livaditis’s claim that he had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive representation in…

Calling the state’s death penal­ty​“dys­func­tion­al,”​“cost­ly,” and​“immoral,” Oregon Governor Kate Brown (pic­tured, left, at sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny) on August 1, 2019 signed a bill sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ing the crimes for which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment can be imposed in the state. The new law amends Oregon’s def­i­n­i­tion of death-eli­gi­ble​“aggra­vat­ed mur­der,” reduc­ing the cat­e­gories of mur­der pun­ish­able by death from 19 to four. The new…

Ohio can­not obtain drugs to car­ry out exe­cu­tions with­out putting pub­lic health at risk, Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) announced on July 31, 2019. DeWine told reporters that phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers are unwill­ing to sell the state drugs for exe­cu­tions and have threat­ened to stop sell­ing med­i­cines to any state agency if they sus­pect the drugs might be divert­ed from ther­a­peu­tic use to use in exe­cu­tions. A sales embar­go could mean that the state would not be…

Citing tri­al court inter­fer­ence in her right to present a defense, a fed­er­al appeals court has over­turned the con­vic­tion of a Texas moth­er who was sen­tenced to death on charges that she had mur­dered her two-year-old daugh­ter. In an unpub­lished, unsigned opin­ion issued on July 29, 2019, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that tri­al court rul­ings that blocked Melissa Elizabeth Lucio (pic­tured) from calling…

The announce­ment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that it intends to resume fed­er­al exe­cu­tions after a 16-year hia­tus has sparked com­men­tary from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum and embold­ened the Arizona Attorney General to seek a resump­tion of exe­cu­tions in that state. Responses from con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits demon­strat­ed the increas­ing bipar­ti­san skep­ti­cism towards the death penal­ty. Catholic bish­ops reassert­ed the Church’s now unequivocal…

A for­mer Pennsylvania death-row prison super­in­ten­dent says work­ing on death row makes cor­rec­tions per­son­nel feel​“less human” and​“can be pro­found­ly dam­ag­ing” psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. Cynthia Link (pic­tured) served as the Superintendent of Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution at Graterford from 2015 to 2018, dur­ing a peri­od in which the prison housed more than 20 of the Commonwealth’s death row pris­on­ers. In a July…

NEWS: July 30—The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has upheld a fed­er­al dis­trict court rul­ing per­mit­ting a civ­il law­suit by North Carolina death-row exonerees Henry McCollum and Leon Brown to pro­ceed to tri­al. McCollum and Brown, two intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled broth­ers who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the rape and mur­der of a young girl, allege that police coerced false con­fes­sions from them and then failed…