Publications & Testimony

The Tennessee Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on October 3, 2018 of an appeal brought by 32 death-row pris­on­ers chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. In a move crit­i­cized by one of the court’s jus­tices as a ​“rock­et dock­et,” the court removed the case from a low­er court and set argu­ment for one week before Tennessee’s sched­uled October 11 exe­cu­tion of Edmund Zagorski. Previously, the court denied a stay of…

In a case high­light­ing con­gres­sion­al lim­i­ta­tions on the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry’s abil­i­ty to redress mis­car­riages of jus­tice, a Texas fed­er­al judge has denied relief to a death-row pris­on­er who the court believes was denied a fair tri­al and may well be…

The U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ment in Madison v. Alabama on October 2, 2018 on whether an Alabama death-row pris­on­er who has vas­cu­lar demen­tia, brain dam­age, cog­ni­tive deficits, and mem­o­ry loss from two near-fatal strokes is com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. During oral argu­ment, Bryan Stevenson (pic­tured), the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Equal Justice Initiative, told the jus­tices that, as a result of severe and…

Florida lawyer Patrick Megaro is fac­ing an offi­cial com­plaint by the North Carolina State Bar for alleged­ly defraud­ing death-row exonerees Henry McCollum (pic­tured, right) and Leon Brown (pic­tured, left), and tak­ing a third of the com­pen­sa­tion grant­ed to the two men. Half-broth­ers McCollum and Brown were exon­er­at­ed in 2014 after spend­ing 30 years in prison, some on death row, for the rape and mur­der of an 11-year-old girl. Both men are intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, a fac­tor that…

Finding that the Nevada Department of Corrections act­ed in ​“bad faith” to obtain the drug mida­zo­lam through ​“sub­terfuge,” a Las Vegas tri­al court has issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion bar­ring the state from using its sup­ply of that drug in car­ry­ing out any exe­cu­tion. The 43-page rul­ing issued by Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez (pic­tured) on September 28, 2018 effec­tive­ly freezes efforts by Nevada pros­e­cu­tors to exe­cute Scott Dozier, who has waived his…

A fed­er­al judge in Vermont has accept­ed a plea deal between Donald Fell and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, per­ma­nent­ly remov­ing Fell from death row and end­ing a case that had raised seri­ous ques­tions about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Under the terms of the deal, approved by U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford on September 28, 2018, Fell will serve a sen­tence of life with­out parole for the inter­state kid­nap­ping and mur­der of…

An Arkansas ethics board has filed dis­ci­pli­nary charges against six mem­bers of the Arkansas Supreme Court alleg­ing that they vio­lat­ed the canons of judi­cial ethics in remov­ing a tri­al judge from all death-penal­ty cas­es as a result of the judge’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in an anti-death-penalty…

Texas has sched­uled exe­cu­tions on con­sec­u­tive nights of two pris­on­ers who have long assert­ed their inno­cence. Troy Clark (pic­tured, left), who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on September 26, 2018, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death based on the chang­ing state­ments of a for­mer girl­friend who could have faced the death penal­ty under the Texas law of par­ties but was tried as an accom­plice and sen­tenced to 20 years in prison. Daniel Acker …

The FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2017, released by the U.S. Department of Justice, reports that mur­der rates sta­bi­lized across the United States in 2017, decreas­ing mar­gin­al­ly com­pared to adjust­ed homi­cide fig­ures from 2016 but remain­ing above the record lows record­ed ear­li­er in the decade. The ini­tial FBI crime fig­ures for 2017 report 17,284 mur­ders across the United States in 2017, com­pared to 17,413 in 2016, drop­ping the nation­wide mur­der rate from 5.4 mur­ders per…

Sixteen years after a noto­ri­ous and now-dis­cred­it­ed foren­sic wit­ness told a Mississippi jury that Jeffrey Havard had sex­u­al­ly abused and shak­en his girl­friend’s six-month-old daugh­ter to death, Havard’s death sen­tence — but not his con­vic­tion — has been over­turned. On September 14, 2018, Adams County Circuit Judge Forrest Johnson ruled that state pathol­o­gist Steven Hayne’s recan­ta­tion of his diag­no­sis that infant Chloe Britt had been a vic­tim of Shaken Baby…