Publications & Testimony

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…

Tennessee has scheduled three upcoming executions, despite ongoing litigation surrounding the use of its lethal injection protocol and problems with its lethal-injection drugs that have led five prisoners to opt for death by electrocution. Attorneys for five other death-row prisoners, including Oscar Smith, who has an execution date of June 4, 2020, have filed a federal suit presenting new evidence challenging the state’s execution protocol. Tennessee uses a three-drug protocol of midazolam, a…

DNA exonerated Ryan Matthews in 2004, after he had spent five years on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for a murder he did not commit. In December 2019, he received his college degree. ​“I’m so used to obstacles getting in my way,” Matthews, told Nola​.com. ​“But that won’t stop me. When one door shuts, I work to get another one to open.” In a February 6, 2020 op-ed in The Advocate in which he describes his time on death row, Matthews lends his voice to opening doors for…

NEWS (2/​17/​20): A Kentucky public defender has been cleared of charges that she tampered with evidence in a capital case. On February 17, 2020, a Kentucky grand jury declined to indict Angela Elleman on a felony charge arising out of allegations that she and a defense investigator had dug up shell casings linked to a murder case and kept them in a safe for more than six years. Elleman represents Anthony Hogan, a co-defendant of James Mallory (pictured), who is facing the death penalty.

After a five-year hiatus, Oklahoma has announced plans to resume executions by returning to the same combination of lethal-injection drugs that were part of its execution protocol during a series of botched executions in 2014 and 2015. At a February 13, 2020 press conference, Governor Kevin Stitt, Attorney General Mike Hunter (pictured), and Department of Corrections Director Scott Crow announced that the state will return to a three-drug protocol of midazolam (a sedative), vecuronium bromide…

Rocky Myers (pictured) may be innocent and intellectually disabled, and his jury voted to sentence him to life. So why is he facing execution in Alabama? In the February 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, members of Myers’ legal team tell the story of how racial bias, poor representation, and judicial override led to the possible wrongful conviction of an intellectually disabled man. Assistant Federal Defender Kacey Keeton and Investigator Sara Romano speak with DPIC Managing Director Anne…

NEWS (2/​13/​20): The California Supreme Court has granted a new trial to Kenneth Earl Gay, who was sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of a Los Angeles police officer. In a unanimous decision on February 13, 2020, the court ruled that Gay’s lawyer had ​“obtained appointment to represent Gay through fraud, counseled him to make damaging confessions to the prosecution without safeguards to ensure the confessions would not be used without a deal (while deceiving him as to whether such…