Publications & Testimony

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…

NEWS (2/20/20): Tennessee executed Nicholas Sutton on February 20, 2020, one day after Governor Bill Lee denied a petition for clemency that had been supported by seven correctional officers, five jurors, and members of the victims’ families. In two rulings shortly before 7:30 p.m. Eastern time, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Sutton’s motions to halt the execution and declined to review his claims that he had been unconstitutionally convicted and sentenced to death. One petition argued that he…

Nebraska’s unicameral legislature voted on February 13, 2020 to advance a bill that would increase transparency in the state’s execution process. LB 238, which would allow witnesses to see the execution from the moment the prisoner enters the death chamber until the prisoner is declared dead or the execution is halted, passed an initial consideration by a 33 – 7 vote. It must pass a second vote in order to be submitted to the governor. The bill is a response to concerns about the state’s 2018…

NEWS (2/19/20): Dana Cook has been named National Mitigation Coordinator for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts’ National Habeas Assistance and Training Counsel Project. Cook has more than two decades of experience in capital defender offices in Pennsylvania and Tennessee working as a mitigation specialist at the trial and post-conviction stages of death-penalty cases and in training lawyers and investigators in preparing and presenting mitigating evidence. She currently serves as the…

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has announced plans to allow some of the state’s death-sentenced prisoners to move from San Quentin’s death row to other state prisons that offer work and other rehabilitative programs. In what has been billed a “pilot program,” the eligible prisoners will be able to transfer to one of eight less costly high-security prisons that provide rehabilitative services. The death-sentenced prisoners who are transferred would be required…