Publications & Testimony

Calling the death penal­ty a waste­ful ​“big gov­ern­ment” pol­i­cy that is ​“inept, biased, and cor­rupt,” a lib­er­tar­i­an think tank and a New Orleans colum­nist have joined the cho­rus of con­ser­v­a­tive voic­es call­ing for the end of the death…

State lethal-injec­tion prac­tices may have col­lat­er­al con­se­quences that place pub­lic health at risk, accord­ing to briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on July 23, 2018 by pub­lic health experts and an asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing gener­ic drug man­u­fac­tur­ers. In ami­cus (or friend-of-the-court) briefs filed in con­nec­tion with a chal­lenge brought by death-row pris­on­er Russell Bucklew (pic­tured) to Missouri​’s use of lethal injec­tion, the Association for Accessible…

Lloyd Barrus (pic­tured, left) will not become the first per­son sen­tenced to death in Montana this cen­tu­ry, after pros­e­cu­tors dropped their pur­suit of the death penal­ty for the killing of a sher­if­f’s deputy. In a motion filed July 19, 2018, Broadwater County Attorney Cory Swanson (pic­tured, right) wrote that, ​“after exten­sive analy­sis of the Defendant’s his­to­ry of … men­tal ill­ness,” the state would no longer seek the death penal­ty in the…

Juries in two Broward County, Florida death-penal­ty tri­als have hand­ed down life sen­tences for four cap­i­tal defen­dants in the span of one week, high­light­ing the effect of a new Florida law requir­ing the unan­i­mous agree­ment of the jury before a defen­dant can be sen­tenced to death. On July 16, a Broward County jury spared three defen­dants—Eloyn Ingraham, Bernard Forbes, and Andre Delancy—whom it had con­vict­ed in March of…

Unable to legit­i­mate­ly pur­chase lethal-injec­tion drugs or car­ry out exe­cu­tions with­out reveal­ing who man­u­fac­tured its drugs, Arkansas has sus­pend­ed efforts to obtain a new sup­ply of exe­cu­tion drugs until state law is amend­ed to keep secret the iden­ti­ty of the drug…

Four African-American death-row pris­on­ers in North Carolina whose death sen­tences had been over­turned for racial dis­crim­i­na­tion have chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of sub­se­quent state court rul­ings that rein­stat­ed their death sen­tences and then denied them a new hear­ing on their dis­crim­i­na­tion claims. The four—Marcus Robinson (pic­tured), Tilmon Golphin, Quintel Augustine, and Christina Walters—had over­turned their death…

Ohio Governor John Kasich (pic­tured, left) has com­mut­ed the death sen­tence imposed on Raymond Tibbetts (pic­tured, right) to life with­out parole, in response to a juror’s con­cerns about the unfair­ness of the sen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings in the case. It was the sev­enth time Kasich had com­mut­ed a pris­on­er’s death…

A Louisiana fed­er­al court judge has ordered that exe­cu­tions in the state be stayed for at least anoth­er year. On July 16, 2018, in pro­ceed­ings brought by Louisiana death-row pris­on­ers chal­leng­ing the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick grant­ed a request by state offi­cials to extend by one year the tem­po­rary stay of exe­cu­tion that has been in effect in Louisiana since 2014. Jeffrey Cody, the state’s lawyer in the case, told the court that…

Against the wish­es of the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly and amidst charges that the rejec­tion of his clemen­cy appli­ca­tion was root­ed in racial bias, Texas exe­cut­ed Christopher Young (pic­tured) on July 17, 2018. Young — who had been drunk and high on drugs when he killed Hashmukh Patel dur­ing a failed rob­bery in 2004 — had repeat­ed­ly expressed remorse for the mur­der and had been men­tor­ing trou­bled youth in an effort to pre­vent them from repeat­ing his mis­takes. The vic­tim’s son,…