Publications & Testimony

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

In a divi­sive 5 – 4 deci­sion that exposed ran­cor and deep rifts among the jus­tices, the U.S. Supreme Court has giv­en Missouri the go-ahead to exe­cute a pris­on­er whose blood-filled tumors in his head, neck, and mouth could burst if the state car­ries out his exe­cu­tion by its cho­sen method. Russell Bucklew (pic­tured), who suf­fers from the rare med­ical con­di­tion, cav­ernous heman­gioma, had argued that Missouri’s lethal…

Within two weeks of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s announce­ment that he was halt­ing exe­cu­tions in the state, the deci­sion to issue the mora­to­ri­um has been bol­stered from two unre­lat­ed and inde­pen­dent sources. A statewide poll under­way at the time of Newson’s mora­to­ri­um announce­ment and released by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) on March 27, 2019 found that by a record 2:1 mar­gin, Californians…

Forty-two years after he and his nephew were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der in Florida and he was sen­tenced to death, Clifford Williams, Jr. (pic­tured) has been exon­er­at­ed. Submitting a report from its Conviction Integrity Unit that found​“no cred­i­ble evi­dence of guilt and … cred­i­ble evi­dence of inno­cence,” Duval County pros­e­cu­tors asked a Jacksonville tri­al court to dis­miss all charges against Williams, now 76 years…