Publications & Testimony

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on October 19, 2018 stayed the exe­cu­tion of Kwame Rockwell (pic­tured), a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill death-row pris­on­er suf­fer­ing from schiz­o­phre­nia, who had been sched­uled to die on October 24. The court found that Rockwell had raised ​“sub­stan­tial doubt that he is not com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed” and reversed a rul­ing by the Tarrant County District Court that had reject­ed Rockwell’s competency…

As Seminole County pros­e­cu­tors seek the death penal­ty against Clemente Javier Aguirre-Jarquin a sec­ond time despite sub­stan­tial evi­dence impli­cat­ing anoth­er sus­pect, the Florida judge who ini­tial­ly sen­tenced Aguirre-Jarquin to death now says he should not be con­vict­ed. Retired Judge O.H. Eaton (pic­tured), who presided over Aguirre-Jarquin’s dou­ble-mur­der tri­al in 2006, said he now believes that the case is a ​“poster child” for the flaws in…

“Has the death penal­ty evolved into an anachro­nism?” asked a pan­el at the August 2, 2018 American Bar Association Annual Meeting in Chicago. Moderator Ronald Tabak, chair of the ABA Death Penalty Committee, and pan­elists Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago; Karen Gottlieb, co-direc­tor of the Florida Center for Capital Representation; Meredith Martin Rountree, senior lec­tur­er at the…

Most of the 142 pris­on­ers on North Carolina​’s death row were con­vict­ed under obso­lete and out­dat­ed death-penal­ty laws and would not have been sen­tenced to death if tried today, accord­ing to a new report by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. The report by the Durham-based defense orga­ni­za­tion, titled Unequal Justice: How Obsolete Laws and Unfair Trials Created North Carolina’s Outsized Death Row, says that near­ly three-quar­ters of the prisoners…

A Nebraska coun­ty has raised prop­er­ty tax­es on its res­i­dents and asked the state leg­is­la­ture for a bailout to help pay a $28.1 mil­lion civ­il judg­ment it owes to six men and women wrong­ly con­vict­ed of rape and mur­der after hav­ing been threat­ened with the death penal­ty. The so-called ​“Beatrice Six” (pic­tured) suc­cess­ful­ly sued Gage County for offi­cial mis­con­duct that led to their wrong­ful con­vic­tions in the…

Finding that the death penal­ty ​“is imposed in an arbi­trary and racial­ly biased man­ner,” a unan­i­mous Washington Supreme Court has struck down the state’s cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment statute as vio­lat­ing Washington’s state con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against ​“cru­el pun­ish­ment.” The court’s rul­ing, authored by Chief Justice Mary E. Fairhurst and issued on October 11, 2018, declared: ​“The death penal­ty, as admin­is­tered in our state, fails to serve any legitimate…

Marking World Day Against the Death Penalty, the gov­ern­ment of Malaysia on October 10, 2018 announced its inten­tion to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the Muslim nation of 30 mil­lion peo­ple. A con­ti­nent away, the Council of Europe and the European Union issued a joint dec­la­ra­tion reaf­firm­ing Europe’s ​“strong oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in all cir­cum­stances.” The European gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions also urged their mem­bers to…

Two Texas pris­on­ers took steps away from death row as state courts ruled in their favor on issues involv­ing false or faulty sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence and argu­ment. On October 5, 2018, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Juan Segundo (pic­tured, left), direct­ing a Tarrant County tri­al court to recon­sid­er a claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty that the courts had pre­vi­ous­ly rejected…

Ignoring dec­la­ra­tions by six jurors in Edmund Zagorski​’s 1984 tri­al that they would have spared Zagorski (pic­tured) if they could have sen­tenced him to life with­out parole, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam reject­ed Zagorski’s peti­tion for clemen­cy on October 5, 2018. In con­junc­tion with the Tennessee Supreme Court’s October 8 rul­ing uphold­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, Haslam’s deci­sion moved the state clos­er to executing…

Junk sci­ence is ​“enabling and per­pet­u­at­ing grave mis­car­riages of jus­tice” in Texas death-penal­ty cas­es. So con­cludes Professor James Acker in his arti­cle, Snake Oil With A Bite: The Lethal Veneer of Science and Texas’s Death Penalty, pub­lished in the lat­est issue of the Albany Law Review. Acker’s arti­cle high­lights the height­ened risks of injus­tice from pseu­do-sci­ence and junk sci­ence in cap­i­tal cas­es in Texas, one of the few states that…