Publications & Testimony

In March 2018, Alabama enact­ed a new law autho­riz­ing the use of nitro­gen gas as an alter­na­tive method of exe­cu­tion. Although lethal injec­tion remained the pri­ma­ry method of exe­cu­tion, the law pro­vid­ed con­demned pris­on­ers a lim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty to des­ig­nate nitro­gen asphyx­i­a­tion (hypox­ia) as the means of their death. The avail­abil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas led to a July 2018 set­tle­ment of a fed­er­al law­suit…

With the sup­port of a record 120 nations, the United Nations General Assembly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion on December 17, 2018 call­ing for a world­wide mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty. The res­o­lu­tion expressed​“deep con­cern” over the use of the death penal­ty and urged those coun­tries that con­tin­ue to use it to take action to ensure that death sen­tences are not the prod­uct of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry or arbi­trary laws or prac­tices. The moratorium resolution,…

Six for­mer gov­er­nors have urged California Governor Jerry Brown (pic­tured) to​“be coura­geous in lead­er­ship” and grant clemen­cy to the 740 men and women on California’s death row before he leaves office on January 7, 2019. In a December 13 op-ed in the New York Times, the for­mer gov­er­nors — Ohio’s Richard Celeste, Oregon’s John Kitzhaber, Maryland’s Martin O’Malley, New Mexico’s Bill Richardson and Toney Anaya, and Illinois’s Pat Quinn — wrote that​“Mr.

The long-term decline of death-penal­­ty use in the U.S. con­tin­ued in 2018, as a twen­ti­eth state abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences remained near gen­er­a­tional lows. On October 11, the Washington State Supreme Court struck down the state’s death penal­ty, find­ing that it was imposed arbi­trar­i­ly and in a racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry man­ner. Washington became the eighth state to leg­isla­tive­ly or judi­cial­ly abol­ish the death penalty…

A group of jus­tice-reform orga­ni­za­tions has issued a new report, 21 Principles for the 21^st Century Prosecutor, that calls on pros­e­cu­tors to​“work to end the death penal­ty” as part of its rec­om­mend­ed reforms in pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al prac­tices. The report, pre­pared joint­ly by the orga­ni­za­tions Fair and Just Prosecution, the Brennan Center for Justice, and the Justice Collaborative, sets forth a series of principles…

Mark Heyer, whose daugh­ter, Heather Heyer (pic­tured), was killed in 2017 while protest­ing a white suprema­cist ral­ly in Charlottesville, Virginia, says he does not want fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to pur­sue the death penal­ty against the man who killed his daugh­ter. James Alex Fields, Jr., a 21-year-old who iden­ti­fies as a neo-Nazi, was tried in Virginia state court and con­vict­ed of mur­der and a litany of other…

Texas is sched­uled to exe­cute Alvin Braziel, Jr. on December 11, 2018, in what would be the state’s 13^th exe­cu­tion of the year. Braziel was 18 years old in 1993 when he killed a man and sex­u­al­ly assault­ed a woman after a failed rob­bery attempt. His age places him just above the legal bound­ary to be eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence, though recent neu­ro­science research on brain devel­op­ment indi­cates the deficits in judg­ment and impulse con­trol that led the…

On December 10, 2018, the United Nations and oth­er inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions cel­e­brat­ed Human Rights Day, mark­ing the 70^th anniver­sary of the adop­tion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration, which has served as a foun­da­tion for the UN’s efforts to abol­ish the death penal­ty, con­tains 30 arti­cles stat­ing uni­ver­sal­ly applic­a­ble rights based on the​“inher­ent dig­ni­ty” and​“equal and inalien­able rights of all mem­bers of the…

Tennessee exe­cut­ed David Earl Miller (pic­tured at age 24) in the state’s elec­tric chair on December 6, 2018, after Governor Bill Haslam denied his appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to address the denials of his chal­lenges to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Tennessee’s exe­cu­tion meth­ods. Miller, a 61-year-old man with a sig­nif­i­cant his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness who expe­ri­enced exten­sive sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse as a child, opted…

The exe­cu­tion process in Indiana and Missouri may become more trans­par­ent as a result of pub­­lic-access law­suits filed in the two states. In Indiana, a Marion County tri­al judge ruled on November 30, 2018 that the state must release pre-2017 records con­cern­ing the drugs obtained by the state for exe­cu­tions and the com­pa­nies that pro­duced them. Three days ear­li­er, the ACLU of Missouri announced the set­tle­ment of a law­suit filed on behalf of…