Publications & Testimony

Colorado Governor Jared Polis (pic­tured) has said he will​“strong­ly con­sid­er” com­mut­ing the death sen­tences of the three men on the state’s death row if the state abol­ish­es the death penal­ty. In a February 7, 2019 inter­view on Colorado Public Radio, Polis told Colorado Matters host Ryan Warner,​“if the leg­is­la­ture sends us a bill to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty in Colorado, I would sign that bill … [and] I would certainly take…

Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured, left) and Oklahoma death-row pris­on­er Julius Jones (pic­tured, right) are ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to grant them new tri­als after evi­dence showed that white jurors who described the defen­dants with racist slurs par­tic­i­pat­ed in decid­ing their cas­es. The involve­ment of the racist jurors, the pris­on­ers say, vio­lat­ed their Sixth Amendment rights to…

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion that Justice Elena Kagan char­ac­ter­ized as​“pro­found­ly wrong,” the U.S. Supreme Court on February 7, 2019 per­mit­ted Alabama to exe­cute a Muslim death-row pris­on­er, Domineque Ray (pic­tured), who had claimed that the state’s exe­cu­tion process dis­crim­i­nat­ed against him because of his reli­gion. Without expla­na­tion, the Court assert­ed that Ray had wait­ed too long to chal­lenge a pro­vi­sion in Alabama’s…

Clemency, a film explor­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of the death penal­ty, has been award­ed the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Drama at the pres­ti­gious Sundance Film Festival on February 2, 2019. The movie, writ­ten and direct­ed by Nigerian-American film­mak­er Chinonye Chukwu, tells the sto­ry of prison war­den Bernadine Williams (por­trayed by Alfre Woodard) as she pre­pares to over­see her 12^th exe­cu­tion in the aftermath of…

According to new polling results, sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in North Carolina has fall­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly, with only 25% of vot­ers say­ing they pre­fer the death penal­ty for peo­ple con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der. The poll, con­duct­ed the last week of January 2019 by Public Policy Polling, found that near­ly three quar­ters of North Carolina vot­ers reject­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der, with 35% preferring…

Idaho offi­cials delib­er­ate­ly mis­led the pub­lic about the costs and appli­ca­tion of the state’s death penal­ty and prison offi­cials’ ques­tion­able efforts at obtain­ing exe­cu­tion drugs, accord­ing to evi­dence pre­sent­ed in week-long court hear­ings on the state’s exe­cu­tion secre­cy prac­tices. Testimony from January 28 through February 1, 2019 in an open-records law­suit against the Idaho Department of Corrections has revealed that Idaho paid $10,000 in cash to…

For the first time since Georgia brought back the death penal­ty in 1973, the state will go five years with­out impos­ing any death sen­tences. No jury has hand­ed down a death sen­tence since March 2014 and, with no cap­i­tal tri­als sched­uled for February or March, the state is near­ly cer­tain to reach the 5‑year mile­stone. The decline in death sen­tenc­ing is even more dra­mat­ic in light of the fact that, pri­or to 2015, Georgia had nev­er gone two consecutive years…

A fed­er­al appeals court has found 80-year-old Charles Ray Finch (pic­tured)​“actu­al­ly inno­cent” of the mur­der for which he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in North Carolina 42 years ago. The pro­nounce­ment came in a unan­i­mous rul­ing issued by a three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on January 25, 2019. In that deci­sion, Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory wrote that​“Finch has over­come the exacting standard…

Efforts to repeal the death penal­ty have often focused on the needs of mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. For exam­ple, in Connecticut, 179 mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies signed a letter to…

Texas exe­cut­ed Robert Jennings (pic­tured) on January 30, 2019 for the 1988 mur­der of Houston police offi­cer Elston Howard, amid ques­tions as to his eli­gi­bil­i­ty for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of his death sen­tence. Jennings was con­vict­ed under a sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down short­ly before his tri­al in 1989 because it did not ade­quate­ly allow jurors to consider evidence…