Publications & Testimony

A recent law review arti­cle crit­i­cizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of its ​‘shad­ow dock­et’ in cap­i­tal cas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in recent years. The Capital Shadow Docket and the Death of Judicial Restraint, by Professor Jenny-Brooke Condon, explains that the Court ​“invokes judi­cial restraint to jus­ti­fy its refusal to sec­ond-guess the cru­el­ty of chal­lenged exe­cu­tion meth­ods or when Justices cite fed­er­al­ism-based ratio­nales for refus­ing to delay state enforce­ment of a death sen­tences … And yet on the Supreme Court’s shad­ow dock­et, the Court’s death penal­ty jurispru­dence is any­thing but restrained.” 

At an August 15, 2023 ral­ly orga­nized by The Promise for Justice Initiative, a group opposed to the death penal­ty and which advo­cates for greater change in the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem, fam­i­ly mem­bers of vic­tims and pris­on­ers and death row exoneree Shareef Cousin called on the Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole to grant the 56 clemen­cy appli­ca­tions that have been sub­mit­ted by pris­on­ers on death row. ​“Part of clemen­cy is real­ly about giv­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to the sur­vivors of these crimes to work on rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, to work on the…

On August 18, 2023, a mil­i­tary judge in Guantanamo Bay over­see­ing the pre­tri­al cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Saudi nation­al accused of orga­niz­ing the October 2000 bomb­ing of the U.S.S. Cole, exclud­ed Mr. al-Nishiri’s con­fes­sions as the prod­uct of tor­ture. ​“Exclusion of such evi­dence is not with­out soci­etal costs,” said the judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., in a 50-page deci­sion. ​“However, per­mit­ting the admis­sion of evi­dence obtained by or derived from tor­ture by the same gov­ern­ment that seeks to pros­e­cute and exe­cute the accused may have even greater…

On August 16, 2023, Michael Cummins, who was fac­ing the death penal­ty for the 2019 killings of eight indi­vid­u­als in rur­al Tennessee, pled guilty to all eight counts of first-degree mur­der in exchange for life in prison with­out parole. Sumner County District Attorney Ray Whitley told the press that he had reversed his deci­sion to seek a death sen­tence and agreed to the plea based on new evi­dence regard­ing Mr. Cummins’ men­tal health. That evi­dence includ­ed Mr. Cummins’ brain scans, which showed ​“sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems” and impair­ment of brain activ­i­ty. DA…

Two of the five mem­bers of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, which con­sid­ers the clemen­cy peti­tions of the state’s death row pris­on­ers, have resigned. Board chair­man Richard Smothermon and mem­ber Cathy Stocker both announced that the board’s August 2023 meet­ing would be their last. Governor Kevin Stitt has appoint­ed for­mer District Attorney Kevin Buchanan to replace Ms. Stocker, while Mr. Smothermon’s replace­ment will be select­ed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. 

On August 8, 2023, death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Aubrey Trail peti­tioned the state to set his exe­cu­tion date. Currently, there are 10 oth­ers on death row in Nebraska, but the state does not pos­sess the nec­es­sary lethal injec­tion drugs for any exe­cu­tions. Nebraska has not exe­cut­ed any­one in more than five years. The last per­son exe­cut­ed was Carey Dean Moore in 2018 via lethal injec­tion. Mr. Trail con­fessed to the 2017 killing of Sydney Loofe and was sen­tenced to death by a three-judge pan­el in 2021. In a let­ter to the Lincoln Star…

Idaho U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has ruled in favor of death row pris­on­er Gerald Pizzuto, indef­i­nite­ly paus­ing his March 2023 exe­cu­tion date, and grant­i­ng him a hear­ing in his claim that the state of Idaho vio­lates his Constitutional right against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment by repeat­ed­ly sched­ul­ing exe­cu­tion dates while know­ing the state does not have the means to car­ry it out. ​“As Pizzuto describes it,” Judge Winmill wrote, ​“defen­dants’ repeat­ed resched­ul­ing of his exe­cu­tion is like dry fir­ing in a mock exe­cu­tion or a game of Russian…

Charles Ogletree, Jr., a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for racial and crim­i­nal jus­tice, died on August 4, 2023, after a long ill­ness. As a tenured pro­fes­sor at Harvard University, Professor Ogletree spoke and wrote often about the death penal­ty and men­tored many stu­dents, includ­ing both Barack and Michelle Obama. In a 2014 Washington Post op-ed, he crit­i­cized the use of the death penal­ty in the United States, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, brain impair­ments, or who suf­fer from the effects of severe trau­ma. He not­ed that ​“bar­ring the death penalty…

Human rights advo­cates are crit­i­ciz­ing the Singapore government’s plan to exe­cute more death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of non-vio­lent drug offens­es. Singapore has so far hanged 16 peo­ple since resum­ing state exe­cu­tions in March last year, and all of those exe­cut­ed were low- to mid-lev­el drug offend­ers con­vict­ed of traf­fick­ing amounts of drugs that would cur­rent­ly result in rel­a­tive­ly small pun­ish­ments in the UK and US. There is wide­spread pub­lic sup­port for use of the death penal­ty as an effec­tive pol­i­cy for reduc­ing drug traf­fick­ing in Singapore. In the U.S., one pres­i­den­tial can­di­date supports…

Gary Tyler was just 16 years old when he was charged with shoot­ing a white stu­dent in 1974 and sen­tenced to death, a crime that, many wit­ness­es agree, he did not com­mit. Mr. Tyler, then a sopho­more in high school in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, was rid­ing a school bus that was attacked by a seg­re­ga­tion­ist mob. In the chaos, some­one fired a shot that killed a 13-year-old white boy, Timothy Weber. After Mr. Tyler, who is Black, spoke to one of the deputies, he was arrest­ed for alleged­ly disturbing…