Publications & Testimony

An amend­ed bill to nar­row the cir­cum­stances in which the death penal­ty may be imposed in Oregon has eas­i­ly passed the state sen­ate. On May 21, 2019, by a vote of 18 – 9, the Oregon Senate passed SB 1013, which would lim­it the state’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to three aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances and elim­i­nate spec­u­la­tion about a defendant’s future dan­ger­ous­ness from a jury’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing delib­er­a­tions. The bill would allow…

A North Carolina man wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death based upon false foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny and an eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion manip­u­lat­ed by police mis­con­duct has been freed from prison after 43 years. On May 23, 2019, fed­er­al dis­trict court judge Terrence Boyle ordered North Carolina to release for­mer death-row pris­on­er Charles Ray Finch (pic­tured with his mem­bers of his legal team) from cus­tody, five months after…

Florida has exe­cut­ed Bobby Joe Long (pic­tured), a men­tal­ly ill Vietnam vet­er­an with ser­vice-relat­ed trau­mat­ic brain injuries, after the U.S. Supreme Court on May 23, 2019 declined to review his case. Long had asked the Court to halt his exe­cu­tion to address “[w]hether an indi­vid­ual who suf­fers from severe men­tal ill­ness is exempt from exe­cu­tion under the Eighth Amendment. In 1980, Long received a diag­no­sis of​“Traumatic…

Two for­eign nation­als who were sen­tenced to death in unre­lat­ed cas­es will receive new tri­als after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of low­er court rul­ings over­turn­ing their con­vic­tions. Jose Echavarria (pic­tured, left), a Nevada pris­on­er orig­i­nal­ly from Cuba, and Ahmad Issa (pic­tured, right), an Ohio pris­on­er orig­i­nal­ly from Jordan, each were award­ed new tri­als by federal appellate…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a case in which the Texas courts decid­ed a death-row prisoner’s appeal by adopt­ing the prosecution’s fact find­ings and legal argu­ments word-for-word with­out pro­vid­ing the defendant’s lawyer any oppor­tu­ni­ty to respond. In a May 20, 2019 rul­ing, the Court with­out com­ment denied the peti­tion for writ of cer­tio­rari filed by Ray Freeney (pic­tured), there­by permitting the…

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has drawn crit­i­cism for deny­ing clemen­cy and pre­sid­ing over the exe­cu­tion of Michael Samra (pic­tured) on May 16, 2019, one day after issu­ing a state­ment call­ing Alabama a pro-life state and declar­ing life​“pre­cious” and​“sacred.” On May 15, Ivey signed into law a bill that crim­i­nal­izes abor­tion, say­ing that the new law​“stands as a pow­er­ful tes­ta­ment to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is pre­cious and that every life is…

In the lat­est episode of the Discussions with DPIC pod­cast, Emmy- and Oscar-win­n­er Edward Zwick speaks about his new movie, Trial By Fire. The film, which Zwick co-pro­­duced and direct­ed, tells the sto­ry of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1992 for the deaths of his three chil­dren in a house fire that pros­e­cu­tors wrong­ly claimed had been inten­tion­al­ly set. As Willingham’s exe­cu­tion approached in 2004, evi­dence came to…

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued an advi­so­ry mem­o­ran­dum declar­ing that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)​“lacks juris­dic­tion” to reg­u­late exe­cu­tion drugs, includ­ing enforc­ing fed­er­al laws that pro­hib­it the import of such drugs from abroad. The mem­o­ran­dum, authored by Assistant Attorney General Steven A. Engel (pic­tured) for the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, places the administration…

In the wake of sharp crit­i­cism of sev­er­al con­tro­ver­sial death-penal­­ty deci­sions, the five con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices of the U.S. Supreme Court issued three opin­ions on May 13, 2019, explain­ing their votes in those ear­li­er cas­es. The opin­ions, issued in con­nec­tion with the appar­ent­ly incon­sis­tent orders in reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion claims brought by two death-row pris­on­ers and a deci­sion declin­ing to review the case of an Alabama death-row…

Facing a May 16, 2019 exe­cu­tion date, Alabama death-row pris­on­er Michael Brandon Samra (pic­tured) has asked the United States Supreme Court and Governor Kay Ivey to halt his exe­cu­tion and for the Court to con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly of impos­ing the death penal­ty upon 19-year-old offend­ers. In a peti­tion filed on April 27, Samra — a teenage offend­er with bor­der­line intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing — asked…