Publications & Testimony

As he pre­pared for retire­ment, the long-time direc­tor of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said he does not sup­port the death penal­ty and believes the pun­ish­ment is on its way out in Georgia and across the coun­try. In a tele­vi­sion inter­view on his final day of work as GBI direc­tor, Vernon Keenan (pic­tured) told WXIA-TV, Atlanta’s NBC tele­vi­sion affil­i­ate, that he has ​“nev­er believed in the death penal­ty” and “[t]he day will come when we won’t have the…

Nations that abol­ish the death penal­ty then tend to see their mur­der rates decline, accord­ing to a December 2018 report by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a Washington, DC-based orga­ni­za­tion that pro­motes human rights and democ­ra­cy in Iran. The report exam­ined mur­der rates in 11 coun­tries that have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, find­ing that ten of those coun­tries expe­ri­enced a decline in mur­der rates in the decade fol­low­ing abo­li­tion. Countries were includ­ed if they met the following…

The Florida Supreme Court issued rul­ings in thir­teen death penal­ty cas­es in the last two weeks of 2018, uphold­ing con­vic­tions and death sen­tences in ten, revers­ing one death sen­tence, remand­ing one case for a new hear­ing on intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and allow­ing lim­it­ed DNA test­ing in anoth­er case. The most notable of the deci­sions came in the cas­es of Gerald Murray (pic­tured left) and Steven Taylor (pic­tured, right), decid­ed on December 20,…

The retire­ment of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the U.S. Supreme Court after the 2017 – 2018 court term and his replace­ment with Justice Brett Kavanaugh marked a poten­tial­ly piv­otal change in the con­sti­tu­tion of the Court with respect to death-penalty…

2018 was a record-low year for death-penal­ty usage in the United States, as eigh­teen death-penal­ty states set or matched records for the fewest new death sen­tences imposed in the mod­ern his­to­ry of U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. (Click here to enlarge map.) Thirty-five U.S. states — includ­ing six­teen that autho­rized cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2018 — did not impose any death sen­tences in 2018, while California and Pennsylvania, which col­lec­tive­ly account for…