Publications & Testimony

A badly divided federal court of appeals has lifted a court order that had prevented the federal government from resuming executions after a hiatus of more than 16 years. In a fractured ruling with three separate opinions and no rationale for its decision commanding a majority, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2 – 1 on April 7, 2020 to vacate the preliminary injunction that had blocked the federal government from carrying out four executions in…

NEWS (4/7/20) — Nevada: A trial-court judge in Las Vegas has dismissed a lawsuit filed by drugmakers against the Nevada prison system after state officials agreed to return unused drugs it had obtained under false pretenses in a failed attempt to execute Scott Dozier in 2018. Pharmaceutical companies Alvogen, Inc., Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA, and Sandoz Inc. reached a settlement with the state in which Nevada agreed to give back the drugs, which have expired, in exchange for a refund of their…

Ohio death-row prisoner Melvin Bonnell (pictured) has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to vacate his conviction and death sentence after his lawyers discovered physical evidence from his case that Cuyahoga County prosecutors had repeatedly insisted since the mid-1990s had been lost or destroyed. Bonnell was scheduled to be executed February 12, 2020, but received a reprieve in December 2019 because of what Governor Mike DeWine described as “ongoing problems” in obtaining execution drugs. Saying…

NEWS (4/6/20) — Texas: A Texas trial court has rescheduled the execution of Billy Joe Wardlow from April 29, 2020 until July 8, 2020, the fourth execution in Texas that has been postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic. District Judge Angela Saucier granted a motion filed by the Morris County District Attorney’s office to reschedule the execution, rather than withdrawing the death warrant as a defense motion had requested. If the court had withdrawn the warrant, prosecutors would have been…

Official misconduct and perjury or false accusation continue to be the main reasons innocent men and women are wrongfully convicted in America, according to the 2019 annual report by the National Registry of Exonerations. That misconduct, the report indicates, is most prevalent in cases involving the most serious criminal charges. The registry reported on March 31, 2020 that 143 men and women were exonerated in 2019 following wrongful convictions across the United States. More than half (76)…

Pakistan (4/3/20) — The Sindh High Court, the highest court of the Pakistani province of Sindh, has overturned the conviction and death sentence of al-Qaeda leader Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh for the graphic murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002. The court upheld Sheikh’s conviction for kidnapping, reduced his sentence to seven years in prison, and released him on time served. The court acquitted three others of the murder charges and released them. Fahad…

Courts are failing badly in keeping junk psychological science out of the courtroom in criminal cases, permitting the admission of psychological tests that have never been reviewed for reliability and others that have been found unreliable, a recent study reports. Among the problematic tests, another group of psychologists write, is a “psychopathy checklist” commonly used by prosecutors to argue that a defendant poses a future danger to society and should be sentenced to death. The article…

After ignoring health risks posed by lengthy court proceedings during the coronavirus pandemic and facing criticism that a capital prosecution following the state’s abolition of capital punishment would amount to a politically partisan waste of taxpayer dollars, prosecutors in Adams County, Colorado have announced that they will drop the death penalty in a high-profile case involving the killing of a sheriff’s deputy. On March 30, 2020, 17^th Judicial District Attorney Dave Young filed papers…

Nebraska (4/3/20) — In a state post-conviction appeal, the Nebraska Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the state’s capital sentencing process filed by death-row prisoner Jeffrey Hessler. Hessler argued that Nebraska’s three-judge sentencing proceedings violated his Sixth Amendment right to have a jury determine all facts necessary for a death sentence to be imposed. The court ruled that Hessler’s argument was untimely and therefore procedurally barred, and added that under the recent U.S.

NEWS (4/1/20) — Texas: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted a 60-day stay of execution to Fabian Hernandez, the third stay of execution it has granted during the coronavirus State of Disaster declared by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Although the court’s order doesn’t specify a reason for the stay, Hernandez’s counsel filed a motion seeking to delay his execution based on “the current health crisis, the enormous resources needed to address the emergency,” and counsel’s inability to…