Publications & Testimony

For decades, stud­ies have shown per­sis­tent racial dis­par­i­ties in the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Saying​“death sen­tences are uneven­ly and unfair­ly applied based on race,” California Governor Gavin Newsom on March 13, 2019 imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state with the nation’s largest death row. Responding to the governor’s mora­to­ri­um In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Stanford…

Broward County, Florida pros­e­cu­tors moved to posthu­mous­ly exon­er­ate Ronald Stewart (pic­tured) of a rape and mur­der he did not com­mit. Stewart pled no con­test to the 1983 rape and mur­der of Regina Harrison after he was threat­ened with the death penal­ty. The actu­al killer, whose guilt has since been con­firmed by DNA test­ing, went on to mur­der at least two more women…

Rocky Myers (pic­tured) may be inno­cent and intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. His jury did not think he should be sen­tenced to die. Alabama intends to exe­cute him any­way. Myers’ case is rife with legal issues, but he received no fed­er­al court review because his appel­late lawyer aban­doned him with­out notice, let­ting the fil­ing dead­line for chal­leng­ing Myers’ con­vic­tion and death sen­tence expire. In a recent fea­ture sto­ry in The Nation, reporter Ashoka Mukpo tells the…

The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to grant a new tri­al to Curtis Flowers (pic­tured), an African-American death-row pris­on­er tried six times for the same mur­ders by a white Mississippi pros­e­cu­tor who struck near­ly every black juror from ser­vice in each of the tri­als. During oral argu­ment in Flowers v. Mississippi on March 20, 2019, eight jus­tices expressed con­cern that Flowers had been denied a fair…

In a vic­to­ry for the media and advo­cates of open gov­ern­ment, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on March 18, 2019 that Alabama must dis­close key por­tions of its high­ly secre­tive lethal-injec­­tion exe­cu­tion pro­to­col to the pub­lic. The Associated Press, the Montgomery Advertiser, and Alabama Media Group had sued for access to the pro­to­col, which came under intense scruti­ny in the wake of Alabama’s failed…

For the sec­ond time in just over one month, the United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for the exe­cu­tion of an African-American pris­on­er in the face of strong evi­dence of racial or reli­gious bias. On March 18, 2019, the Court unan­i­mous­ly declined to hear an appeal from Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured), who argued his death sen­tence was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly taint­ed by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of racist…

Beth Kissileff (pic­tured), a writer and the wife of a rab­bi who sur­vived the shoot­ing ram­page that killed eleven wor­ship­pers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life syn­a­gogue, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice not to seek the death penal­ty against the man charged with com­mit­ting those mur­ders. In an opin­ion arti­cle for the Religion News Service, Kissileff wrote that she and her hus­band, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman of Pittsburgh’s New Light Congregation, engaged federal prosecutors…

This list tracks known Florida death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers eli­gi­ble for relief under Hurst v. Florida (2016) because 1) their jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death were not unan­i­mous, and 2) their con­vic­tions became final after Ring v. Arizona (2002), which estab­lished that juries must find each aggra­vat­ing fac­tor nec­es­sary to impose death. The ini­tial list was gen­er­at­ed by Michael Radelet, Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and reported the…

Two pros­e­cu­tors with dif­fer­ent philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tives on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have called on their respec­tive states to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Boulder County, Colorado, District Attorney Michael Dougherty (pic­tured, left), who oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in prin­ci­ple, and for­mer Washoe County, Nevada, homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor Thomas E. Viloria (pic­tured, right), who has suc­cess­ful­ly obtained four death ver­dicts, have…

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