Publications & Testimony

Mark Heyer, whose daugh­ter, Heather Heyer (pic­tured), was killed in 2017 while protest­ing a white suprema­cist ral­ly in Charlottesville, Virginia, says he does not want fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to pur­sue the death penal­ty against the man who killed his daugh­ter. James Alex Fields, Jr., a 21-year-old who iden­ti­fies as a neo-Nazi, was tried in Virginia state court and con­vict­ed of mur­der and a litany of oth­er crimes for dri­ving a car…

Texas is sched­uled to exe­cute Alvin Braziel, Jr. on December 11, 2018, in what would be the state’s 13^th exe­cu­tion of the year. Braziel was 18 years old in 1993 when he killed a man and sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a woman after a failed rob­bery attempt. His age places him just above the legal bound­ary to be eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence, though recent neu­ro­science research on brain devel­op­ment indi­cates the deficits in judg­ment and impulse con­trol that led the United States Court to…

On December 10, 2018, the United Nations and oth­er inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions cel­e­brat­ed Human Rights Day, mark­ing the 70^th anniver­sary of the adop­tion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration, which has served as a foun­da­tion for the UN’s efforts to abol­ish the death penal­ty, con­tains 30 arti­cles stat­ing uni­ver­sal­ly applic­a­ble rights based on the ​“inher­ent dig­ni­ty” and ​“equal and inalien­able rights of all mem­bers of the human fam­i­ly.” Article 3…

Tennessee exe­cut­ed David Earl Miller (pic­tured at age 24) in the state’s elec­tric chair on December 6, 2018, after Governor Bill Haslam denied his appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to address the denials of his chal­lenges to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Tennessee’s exe­cu­tion meth­ods. Miller, a 61-year-old man with a sig­nif­i­cant his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness who expe­ri­enced exten­sive sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse as a child, opt­ed to be exe­cut­ed by elec­tric chair…

The exe­cu­tion process in Indiana and Missouri may become more trans­par­ent as a result of pub­lic-access law­suits filed in the two states. In Indiana, a Marion County tri­al judge ruled on November 30, 2018 that the state must release pre-2017 records con­cern­ing the drugs obtained by the state for exe­cu­tions and the com­pa­nies that pro­duced them. Three days ear­li­er, the ACLU of Missouri announced the set­tle­ment of a law­suit filed on behalf of investigative…

In August 2018, Pope Francis pro­mul­gat­ed a new Catholic Catechism that deemed the death penal­ty ​“inad­mis­si­ble” in all cas­es and com­mit­ted the Church to work­ing to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment world­wide. Cardinal Blase Cupich, the ninth Bishop of the Archdiocese of Chicago, joined DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham on the lat­est episode of the pod­cast Discussions with DPIC, to explore the impli­ca­tions of the new teach­ings and how they fit into the…

Texas plans to exe­cute Joseph Garcia on December 4, 2018, for the mur­der of a police offi­cer dur­ing a rob­bery in which Garcia nei­ther killed any­one nor intend­ed or expect­ed that a killing would take place. His case renews ques­tions about a Texas law called the ​“law of par­ties” that allows defen­dants to be sen­tenced to death based upon the actions and intent of oth­ers, if the defen­dant played even a small role in a crime that result­ed in someone’s…

A three-judge pan­el of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has unan­i­mous­ly over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Virginia death-row pris­on­er Mark E. Lawlor in 2011, rul­ing that the tri­al court had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pre­vent­ed Lawlor from pre­sent­ing expert men­tal health tes­ti­mo­ny that he posed a low risk of vio­lence in prison if the jury spared his life. On November 27, 2018, the court reversed a deci­sion of a Virginia fed­er­al district…

Twenty months after the Unites States Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly struck down Texas​’s non-sci­en­tif­ic stan­dard for eval­u­at­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in death penal­ty cas­es, the land­mark case in which it made that deci­sion is back before the Court. On December 7, 2018, the Court will con­fer­ence Moore v. Texas, to decide if it will review whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) once again uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly relied on lay stereo­types and…