Publications & Testimony

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,…

NEWS: July 19—The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld the con­vic­tions and death sen­tences in the case of Nikko Jenkins, who was con­vict­ed of four mur­ders com­mit­ted in Omaha in August 2013. The court reject­ed the chal­lenge that Jenkins — who has attempt­ed sui­cide on mul­ti­ple occa­sions — should not be sub­ject to the death penal­ty because of…

In the span of two weeks, juries in four unre­lat­ed cas­es in which Florida pros­e­cu­tors had sought the death penal­ty have instead returned life sen­tences. The cas­es — which were con­sid­ered prob­a­ble death ver­dicts if judges were per­mit­ted to impose sen­tence — illus­trate the impact of the changes in Florida law in 2016 and 2017 ban­ning judi­cial death sen­tences based on non-unan­i­­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death. Between June 27, 2019 and July 11,…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section will soon release its annu­al report on issues, trends, and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The new pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2019, includes a chap­ter by Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, describ­ing sig­nif­i­cant death penal­ty cas­es and capital…

The num­ber of peo­ple on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing in the United States has con­tin­ued its 19-year decline, accord­ing to a new death-row cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). The Spring 2019 edi­tion of Death Row USA, released in ear­ly July, reports that 2,673 peo­ple in 32 states or in U.S. fed­er­al or mil­i­tary cus­tody were on death rows across the U.S. as of April 1, 2019. That total reflects a 2.6% drop from the…