Publications & Testimony

Death row and the number of prisoners facing active death sentences in the U.S. continue to decline, according to the latest quarterly survey of death row by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). The Fall 2019 edition of Death Row USA, released earlier this month, reports that 2,639 people were on death row or facing capital resentencing across the United States as of October 1, 2019. That number represents a 3.0% drop from last year’s October report and a 27% decline from the…

Keith Tharpe — an African American sentenced to death 29 years ago by a jury that included a member who called him the ​“N‑word” and doubted whether ​“Black people even have souls”— died on Georgia’s death row January 24, 2020. He was 61 years old. In a press statement, his lawyers from the Georgia Death Penalty Resource Center said he had been suffering from cancer and likely died of complications from the disease. Tharpe challenged his death sentence after Barney Gattie, a juror in his case…

NEWS — January 31: Citing the unavailability of execution drugs, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has issued reprieves of three more executions scheduled for the first half of 2020. DeWine postponed the March 12 execution of Gregory Lott until May 27, 2021, delayed John Stumpf’s April 16 execution until September 15, 2021, and rescheduled the May 12 execution of Warren ​“Keith” Henness for January 12, 2022. Six more execution dates are still pending for Ohio death-row prisoners in 2020, but they are not…

In a dramatic reversal made possible by changes in court personnel, the Florida Supreme Court has repudiated its prior decisions requiring that capital sentencing juries unanimously agree to the death penalty before a trial judge may sentence a defendant to death. ​“Our court … got it wrong,” the justices said, when it ruled in 2016 that death sentences imposed after non-unanimous jury recommendations for death violated the state and federal constitutions. The court’s January 23, 2020 decision…

In a case prosecutors now describe as a ​“perfect storm” of injustice, Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Christopher Williams (pictured) and his co-defendant Theophalis Wilson have been exonerated of a 1989 triple murder in North Philadelphia. On December 23, 2019, conceding that later-fired prosecutors had withheld ​“a plethora of significant material, exculpatory evidence,” the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against Williams. Less than a month later, on January 21…

Saying that Nicholas Sutton ​“has gone from a life-taker to a life-saver,” lawyers for the Tennessee death-row prisoner filed an application for clemency with Governor Bill Lee on January 14, 2020. The clemency application, which requests that Lee commute Sutton’s sentence to life without parole, contained affidavits of support from seven Tennessee correctional officials, members of the victims’ families, and five of the jurors in the case. Sutton currently faces a February 20, 2020 execution…

A DPIC analysis of executions and new death sentences in 2019 has found that even as death penalty usage declined across the United States, racial disparities in its application persisted. Studies have consistently found racial disparities at nearly every stage of the capital punishment process, from policing and charging practices, to jury selection, to jury verdicts, to which cases result in executions. Those patterns of discriminatory sentencing and executions — and particularly…

NEWS — January 24: Keith ​“Bo” Tharpe has died on Georgia’s death row. He was 61 years old. Tharpe was tried and sentenced to death in 1991, a mere three months after his offense. His sentence was tainted by a racist juror who referred to Tharpe as a ​“ni***r” and said he wondered whether ​“Black people even have souls.” Tharpe’s appeals lawyers said he likely died of complications from cancer. NEWS — January 24: The Montgomery County, Pennsylvania District Attorney’s office has announced that it…

On Martin Luther King Day, DPIC looks at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s views on the death penalty. Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violence had no room for capital punishment. In one of his most famous sermons, Loving Your Enemies, Dr. King preached: ​“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” In 1952, Jeremiah Reeves, a…

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has granted clemency to death-row prisoner Jimmy Meders (pictured). One day after his January 15, 2020 clemency hearing, and just six hours before his scheduled execution, the Board announced it had commuted Meders’ death sentence to a sentence of life without possibility of parole. The Board’s commutation order was influenced in large part by affidavits submitted by every living member of the jury from Meders’ 1989 trial supporting his clemency…