Publications & Testimony

Texas death-row prisoner Ruben Gutierrez (pictured) has asked the Texas state courts to stay his execution because of the COVID-19 pandemic as federal litigation continues on his efforts to obtain DNA testing and to require Texas to permit him to have a chaplain present in the execution chamber if his execution proceeds. Attorneys for Gutierrez, whose execution is currently scheduled for June 16, 2020, argue that the pandemic has made it impossible for them to perform critical investigation…

U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker on June 1, 2020 denied a challenge brought by Arkansas death-row prisoners to the use of the controversial drug midazolam in carrying out executions. The ruling followed a two-week hearing on the issue held in May 2019. Lawyers for the prisoners had argued that midazolam does not adequately anesthetize a prisoner during an execution before the second and third drugs, a paralytic drug and a drug that stops the heart, are administered. An attorney for the…

Atlanta is poised to become the latest in a growing number of U.S. cities in which prosecutors have pledged not to seek the death penalty or to use it more sparingly. On May 26, 2020, at a candidate forum hosted by the Georgia Justice Reform Partnership, all three Democratic candidates in Fulton County, Georgia’s June 9 primary election for District Attorney said they would not seek the death penalty. With no Republican opponent in the general election, the winner of the Democratic primary…

State appeal courts in Nevada and Pennsylvania have barred the retrial of two former death-row prisoners as a result of prosecutorial misconduct, paving the way for their exonerations. On January 24, 2020, months after his release from prison, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the decision of a Las Vegas trial court that had dismissed all charges against former death-row prisoner Paul Browning (pictured, left), formally completing his exoneration. Then, on May 19, 2020, the Pennsylvania…

A Florida judge has denied death-row prisoner James Dailey’s motion for a new trial on May 29, 2020, ruling that no new admissible evidence supported Dailey’s claim of innocence. Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Pat Siracusa’s decision came just one day after journalist Pamela Colloff won a National Magazine Award for her investigation of a notorious jailhouse informant who provided key testimony against Dailey. At a hearing in March, Dailey’s attorneys had hoped to present testimony from his…

A federal district court has granted a new trial to Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Samuel Randolph (pictured), holding that the trial court unconstitutionally denied Randolph the right to be represented by counsel of choice, forcing him to go to trial with an unprepared court-appointed lawyer with whom he had an ​“absolute[,] complete breakdown of communication.” In overturning Randolph’s convictions and death sentences for the murders of two men in a Harrisburg bar in 2001, Chief Judge…

A federal district court judge has overturned the conviction and death sentence of Texas death-row prisoner Ronald Prible, finding that celebrity ​“true crime” host Kelly Siegler (pictured) had engaged in extensive misconduct as a Harris County homicide prosecutor in Prible’s capital trial in 2002. U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison granted relief on six separate claims that Siegler hid exculpatory evidence from the defense, provided undisclosed favors to prison informants in exchange for them…

For the third time in 2020, the Florida Supreme Court has reduced the constitutional protections afforded to death-row prisoners. In a May 21 decision in Phillips v. State, the court overturned its own case precedent and limited enforcement of a U.S. Supreme Court case that bars execution of intellectually disabled prisoners. The Miami Herald editorial board said the decision ​“shredded precedent” and ​“ignores clear and data-driven direction from the U.S. Supreme Court.” Dissenting Justice…

Just 20% of Houstonians — a record low — now support the death penalty over life-sentencing alternatives, a new Rice University survey has found. The 2020 Houston Area Survey by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, released on May 4, 2020, found that death-penalty support has declined by more than half since the turn of the 21^st century in the city of 2.3 million residents. The survey results are noteworthy because Houston comprises 50% of the population of Harris County, Texas, a county…

NEWS (5/​29/​2020) — Georgia: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has affirmed a district court ruling denying death-row prisoner Leon Tollette’s habeas corpus challenge to his conviction and death sentence. Tollette had argued that his death sentence should be overturned because of multiple misrepresentations and improper comments the prosecutor made during the penalty-phase closing argument and defense counsel’s failure to investigate and present mitigating evidence. The court…