Publications & Testimony

Nathaniel Woods (pictured, left) did not shoot Alabama police officers Charles Bennett, Carlos ​“Curly” Owen, and Harley Chisholm III (pictured left to right, below). But because of alleged police misconduct, incompetent representation, and Alabama law allowing death verdicts based on non-unanimous jury votes, he faces execution on March 5, 2020 for their deaths. Prosecutors acknowledge that Woods’ co-defendant, Kerry Spencer, shot the officers in an incident in a drug house on June 17, 2004.

A divided U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that James McKinney (pictured), an Arizona death-row prisoner who was unconstitutionally sentenced to death by a trial judge who did not consider mitigating evidence relating to his severe Posttraumatic Stress Disorder from relentless childhood abuse, is not entitled to a jury trial to determine his sentence. On February 25, 2020, in a 5 – 4 opinion authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court upheld the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision to reweigh the…

NEWS (2/​26/​20): The Colorado legislature has sent to the Governor a bill that would prospectively abolish the state’s death penalty. On February 26, 2020, one day after a marathon 12-hour debate on the floor of the House, the Colorado House of Representatives voted 38 – 27 to pass SB 20 – 100 to repeal the state’s capital punishment statute. The Senate had previously approved the legislation on January 30. Governor Jared Polis has ten days to sign the bill into law or to veto it. The Governor has…

Tennessee has set two more execution dates for 2020, directed, advocates say, at men whose cases present unresolved issues of innocence, intellectual disability, and mental competency. On February 24, 2020, the Tennessee Supreme Court granted state prosecutors’ applications for execution dates for Byron Black (pictured, left) and Pervis Payne (pictured, right). The court scheduled Black’s execution for October 8 and Payne’s for December 3, making them the fourth and fifth executions scheduled…

Vernon Madison, an Alabama death-row prisoner whose severe dementia led to a major Supreme Court decision on competency to be executed, has died in prison at the age of 69. Madison’s case twice reached the U.S. Supreme Court on questions of the limits of federal court review of death-penalty cases and whether Alabama was entitled to execute an aging, infirm prisoner whose cognitive abilities were severely compromised. Madison’s attorneys argued that a series of strokes had left him without a…

Nine years after an American Bar Association (ABA) study identified systemic deficiencies in Kentucky’s administration of its death-penalty laws, a new report by past and current Kentucky public defenders charges that the Commonwealth’s failure to take any meaningful remedial action undermines the legitimacy of capital punishment in the state. The public defenders’ Review and Report on the Status of the Recommendations Made by the Kentucky Death Penalty Assessment Team, says that ​“Kentucky has…

NEWS (2/​24/​20): On February 24, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Texas death-row prisoner Rodney Reed’s petition for writ of certiorari, declining to review his case. Reed’s petition raised the question, not yet addressed by the Court, ​“Does the conviction or execution of a person who is actually innocent of the crime violate the United States Constitution?” It also asked the Court to consider the appropriate standard for lower courts to assess: (1) the prejudice from the state’s suppression…

A Florida state court judge has granted death-row prisoner James Dailey an evidentiary hearing on his claim that he did not commit the murder for which he was sentenced to death three decades ago. On February 20, 2020, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Judge Pat Siracusa agreed to a defense request to present testimony from confessed killer Jack Pearcy that Dailey (pictured) — a veteran who served three tours of duty in Vietnam and another in Korea — had no involvement in the 1985 murder of 14-year-old…