Publications & Testimony

This July, in hon­or of Disability Pride Month, the Death Penalty Information Center is post­ing a week­ly fea­ture high­light­ing issues relat­ed to the death penal­ty and dis­abil­i­ty and pro­files of indi­vid­u­als who have played key roles in chang­ing the laws to protect prisoners…

On July 18, 2024, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the state Supreme Court to block a sched­uled evi­den­tiary hear­ing for Marcellus Williams and deny him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to estab­lish his inno­cence before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on September 24, 2024. The Circuit Court of St. Louis County sched­uled the August 21^st hear­ing to assess the​“clear and con­vinc­ing” evi­dence of Mr. Williams’ actu­al inno­cence that prompt­ed St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to…

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Biography: Unwritten instal­la­tion at The Gallery at Penn College (May-July…

The state of Texas was sched­uled to exe­cute Ruben Gutierrez (pic­tured) on July 16, 2024; how­ev­er, the United States Supreme Court issued a rare, last-minute stay of exe­cu­tion just 20 min­utes before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion. This is the first stay of exe­cu­tion grant­ed by the Supreme Court since it issued a stay for Richard Glossip in 2023. In a peti­tion filed with the Supreme Court, attor­neys for Mr. Gutierrez asked the Court to intervene because…

On Thursday, July 18, 2024, the state of Alabama is sched­uled to exe­cute Keith Gavin (pic­tured left) by lethal injec­tion, despite court find­ings that his tri­al coun­sel was inef­fec­tive. Mr. Gavin was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1999 for the shoot­ing death of a deliv­ery dri­ver. A non-unan­i­­mous jury vot­ed 10 – 2 in favor of the death penal­ty for Mr. Gavin, and the tri­al court accept­ed the jury’s sen­tenc­ing out­come. During the penal­ty phase of tri­al, Mr. Gavin’s…

This July, in hon­or of Disability Pride Month, the Death Penalty Information Center is post­ing a week­ly fea­ture high­light­ing issues relat­ed to the death penal­ty and dis­abil­i­ty and pro­files of indi­vid­u­als who have played key roles in chang­ing the laws to protect prisoners…

A July 7, 2024 op-ed in the Tennessean argues that the recent enac­tion of SB 1834, which makes the rape of a child pun­ish­able by death,​“does more harm than good.” Sarah McGee (pic­tured), coor­di­na­tor for Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, explains that dur­ing her work as a vic­­tim-wit­­ness coor­di­na­tor for Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, pro­ba­tion offi­cer, and assis­tant pub­lic defend­er, she ​“learned that when child ser­vice providers and…

A July 10, 2024, National Public Radio (NPR) inves­ti­ga­tion has revealed that Rite Away, a small chain of phar­ma­cies locat­ed around San Antonio and Austin, Texas, com­pound­ed and pro­vid­ed pen­to­bar­bi­tal for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) between 2019 and late 2023 to car­ry out lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions. During the same time peri­od, records at the Texas Board of Pharmacy and fed­er­al Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) indi­cate the phar­ma­cy was cited for…

On June 21, 2024, China announced that courts, pros­e­cu­tors, pub­lic, and state bod­ies should use the death penal­ty against Taiwan sep­a­ratists. The state-run Xinhua news agency report­ed that the new guide­lines rec­om­mend​“severe­ly punish[ing] Taiwan inde­pen­dence diehards for split­ting the coun­try and incit­ing seces­sion crimes in accor­dance with the law, and res­olute­ly defend nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, uni­ty and ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty.” Critics say that the vagueness…