Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced its intent to adopt a new fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col using a sin­gle exe­cu­tion drug and has issued death war­rants set­ting exe­cu­tion dates for five fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers. In a July 25, 2019 press release, the DOJ said that Attorney General William P. Barr had direct­ed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt an adden­dum to the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col spec­i­fy­ing that fed­er­al exe­cu­tions will be…

The decline in the U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ued for a 17^th con­sec­u­tive year in 2017, accord­ing to new­ly released find­ings by the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics. The data in the Bureau’s annu­al death-penal­­ty report, Capital Punishment, 2017: Selected Findi­­ngs, con­firm the long-term find­ings of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund show­ing that death row has fall­en in size every…

A divid­ed Missouri Supreme Court has upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s death-penal­­ty statute against a chal­lenge to its require­ment that the tri­al judge decide a cap­i­tal defendant’s sen­tence in cas­es of a penal­­ty-phase hung jury. In a 4 – 3 deci­sion issued on July 16, 2019, the court reject­ed a claim brought by Craig Wood (pic­tured) that hung-jury judi­cial sen­tenc­ing vio­lat­ed his Sixth Amendment right to tri­al by jury. A 5 – 2 major­i­ty of the court also…

In a high­ly pub­li­cized death-penal­­ty tri­al, Brendt Christensen (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole on July 18, 2019 for the rape and mur­der of Chinese grad­u­ate stu­dent Yingying Zhang when a fed­er­al jury in Peoria, Illinois did not reach a unan­i­mous deci­sion on what sen­tence was appro­pri­ate for his crime. The tri­al attract­ed broad nation­al and inter­na­tion­al atten­tion as a result of the sen­sa­tion­al cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the murder,…

NEWS: July 23—The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that Wyoming pros­e­cu­tors may seek the death penal­ty in resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings against 74-year-old Dale Wayne Eaton. Eaton had been the only per­son on Wyoming’s death row between 2004, when he was sen­tenced to death for a 1988 killing, and 2014, when a fed­er­al dis­trict court reversed his death sen­tence for inef­fec­tive penal­­ty-phase rep­re­sen­ta­tion. At that time, Eaton sought to bar…

Calling Governor Gavin Newsom​’s mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions a​“par­a­digm shift” in the death-penal­­ty land­scape, a defen­dant fac­ing the death penal­ty in Los Angeles has peti­tioned the California Supreme Court to halt cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions in the state. On July 1, 2019, lawyers for Cleamon Johnson—whose death penal­ty tri­al is sched­uled to begin in January 2020 — have filed a pre­tri­al peti­tion for review,…

Citing race dis­par­i­ties, inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion by court-appoint­ed lawyers, and arbi­trary case out­comes, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike down the state’s death penal­ty. In a brief filed on July 15, 2019 in the con­sol­i­dat­ed appeals of Philadelphia death-row pris­on­er Jermont Cox and Northumberland County​’s Kevin Marinelli,…

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who described his decid­ing vote to uphold the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1976 as the one court vote he most regret­ted, has died. He was 99 years old. A media advi­so­ry released by the Supreme Court on July 16, 2019, said that Stevens died of com­pli­ca­tions from a stroke he suf­fered the day before.​“He brought to our bench an inim­itable blend of kind­ness, humil­i­ty, wis­dom, and…

Amidst an ongo­ing law­suit chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of South Carolina​’s death-row con­di­tions, the state has moved its death-row pris­on­ers to a dif­fer­ent prison. On July 11, 2019, the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC) moved the state’s 38 death-row pris­on­ers from Kirkland Correctional Institution to the near­by Broad River Correctional Institution (pic­tured), into a facil­i­ty that had orig­i­nal­ly been built to house death-row…

Rick Unklesbay served as a pros­e­cu­tor in the Pima County Attorney’s Office in Arizona for near­ly four decades, pros­e­cut­ing more than 100 homi­cides, includ­ing six­teen in which death sen­tences were imposed. He put Don Miller on death row and, in November 2000, watched as Arizona put Miller to death. In Arbitrary Death: A Prosecutor’s Perspective on the Death Penalty,…