Publications & Testimony

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…

NEWS (2/13/20): The Florida Supreme Court issued opinions on February 13, 2020 denying relief to prisoners in three death penalty cases. The court upheld Anthony Mungin’s conviction and death sentence despite his assertion that prosecutors had unconstitutionally withheld exculpatory evidence and presented false testimony. Mungin had argued that prosecutors knowingly presented false testimony from an officer who claimed at trial that he had seen two spent shell casings in a stolen car linked to…

As state legislatures in Ohio and Washington contemplate the future of their death-penalty statutes, major newspapers in each of the states are advocating legislative repeal. On February 6, 2020, following a state senate vote to formalize the Washington Supreme Court’s judicial abolition of the state’s death penalty, The Seattle Times editorial board urged the state House of Representatives to complete the job. “The state Supreme Court has struck down Washington’s death-penalty law, but it…

NEWS (2/12/20): On February 12, 2020, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentence imposed on Charles Brownlow, Jr. in Kaufman County in April 2016. The appeals court ruled that Brownlow’s jury had been prevented from properly evaluating his claim of intellectual disability. Brownlow had attempted to present evidence that he was ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. However, the trial judge instructed the jury that it was to evaluate his…

Andre Thomas (pictured) is a Texas death-row prisoner riven with schizophrenia so severe that, in separate incidents, he gouged out both of his eyes and ate one of them. The U.S. Court of Appeals heard oral argument on February 5, 2020, about whether his conviction and death sentence should be overturned because his lawyers failed to present evidence that he was incompetent to be tried, failed to present mitigating evidence of Thomas’ extensive history of mental illness, and failed to object to…