Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a South Dakota death-row pris­on­er whose jurors made anti-gay state­ments and relied on homo­pho­bic beliefs in decid­ing to sen­tence him to death. On April 15, 2019, the Court with­out com­ment denied a peti­tion filed by Charles Rhines (pic­tured) ask­ing the Court to declare that the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an impar­tial jury applies equal­ly to bias against a defendant’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. In…

In a con­tentious rul­ing issued in the ear­ly morn­ing hours of April 12, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion issued by low­er fed­er­al courts and cleared the way for Alabama to exe­cute Christopher Price (pic­tured). The Court’s 5 – 4 deci­sion, issued after 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, came after Alabama had post­poned Price’s exe­cu­tion min­utes before the mid­night Central time expi­ra­tion of his death war­rant, with the low­er court stay…

In a vote death-penal­ty oppo­nents praised as ​“his­toric,” a veto-proof super­ma­jor­i­ty of the New Hampshire leg­is­la­ture gave final approval to a bill that would repeal the state’s death penal­ty statute. By a vote of 17 – 6, the sen­a­tors vot­ed on April 11, 2019 to end cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions in the Granite State, exceed­ing the two-thirds major­i­ty nec­es­sary to over­ride an antic­i­pat­ed veto by Governor Chris Sununu. In March, the state House of Representatives passed the same abolition…

The Missouri Supreme Court has ordered a new sen­tenc­ing tri­al for Marvin D. Rice (pic­tured), a for­mer sheriff’s deputy whose tri­al judge sen­tenced him to death despite the votes of 11 of his 12 jurors to sen­tence him to life. On April 2, 2019, the court vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed by St. Charles County Judge Kelly Wayne Parker in 2017 under the state’s con­tro­ver­sial ​“hung jury” sen­tenc­ing pro­vi­sion. Under that law, the tri­al judge has…

Executions world­wide have fall­en to their low­est lev­els in a decade, accord­ing to a new report released April 9, 2019 by Amnesty…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the exe­cu­tion of Mark Robertson (pic­tured), a Dallas death-row pris­on­er whom Texas had sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on April 11, 2019. The court’s April 8 stay order did not spec­i­fy the rea­son it halt­ed the exe­cu­tion, but Robertson’s lawyers had filed an appeal seek­ing review of their claim that his court-appoint­ed tri­al lawyer, Michael Byck, had ​“engaged in pur­pose­ful dis­crim­i­na­tion” by deliberately…

A Tennessee mur­der victim’s daugh­ter is ask­ing Governor Bill Lee to hon­or their shared faith by spar­ing the life of her mother’s killer. In what they describe as an ​“excep­tion­al” clemen­cy plea, lawyers for Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Don Johnson (pic­tured) write that Cynthia Vaughn, the daugh­ter of Connie Johnson, has request­ed a meet­ing with Gov. Lee to tell him her sto­ry of ​“Christian for­give­ness” and ask that he com­mute Johnson’s sentence…

Legal schol­ars and com­men­ta­tors across the polit­i­cal spec­trum have crit­i­cized the U.S. Supreme Court for its seem­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry actions, less than two months apart, in two near­ly iden­ti­cal reli­gious free­dom claims from death-row pris­on­ers. On February 7, 2019, the Court vacat­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion and per­mit­ted Alabama to exe­cute death-row pris­on­er Domineque Ray (pic­tured, left), who had claimed that the Alabama Department of Corrections…

Citing ​“damn­ing rev­e­la­tions” that police and pros­e­cu­tors have used bribes and threats to secure tes­ti­mo­ny in a three-decades-old cap­i­tal case, the Utah Supreme Court has ordered a Utah County court to con­duct a hear­ing to deter­mine whether death-row pris­on­er Douglas Stewart Carter should receive a new tri­al. Carter has spent 33 years on Utah’s death row. Although police found fin­ger­prints and blood at the crime scene, no phys­i­cal evi­dence tied Carter to the…

As human rights activists raise alarms about a new law in Brunei that would pun­ish homo­sex­u­al­i­ty by death by ston­ing, the U.S. Supreme Court con­sid­ers whether to hear a case in which jurors who exhib­it­ed anti-gay big­otry sen­tenced a gay defen­dant to death. Charles Rhines (pic­tured), a South Dakota death-row pris­on­er, is ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case, after a low­er fed­er­al court denied him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present juror…