Publications & Testimony

Two Texas pris­on­ers took steps away from death row as state courts ruled in their favor on issues involv­ing false or faulty sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence and argu­ment. On October 5, 2018, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Juan Segundo (pic­tured, left), direct­ing a Tarrant County tri­al court to recon­sid­er a claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty that the courts had pre­vi­ous­ly rejected…

Ignoring dec­la­ra­tions by six jurors in Edmund Zagorski​’s 1984 tri­al that they would have spared Zagorski (pic­tured) if they could have sen­tenced him to life with­out parole, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam reject­ed Zagorski’s peti­tion for clemen­cy on October 5, 2018. In con­junc­tion with the Tennessee Supreme Court’s October 8 rul­ing uphold­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, Haslam’s deci­sion moved the state clos­er to executing…

Junk sci­ence is ​“enabling and per­pet­u­at­ing grave mis­car­riages of jus­tice” in Texas death-penal­ty cas­es. So con­cludes Professor James Acker in his arti­cle, Snake Oil With A Bite: The Lethal Veneer of Science and Texas’s Death Penalty, pub­lished in the lat­est issue of the Albany Law Review. Acker’s arti­cle high­lights the height­ened risks of injus­tice from pseu­do-sci­ence and junk sci­ence in cap­i­tal cas­es in Texas, one of the few states that…

The Tennessee Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on October 3, 2018 of an appeal brought by 32 death-row pris­on­ers chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. In a move crit­i­cized by one of the court’s jus­tices as a ​“rock­et dock­et,” the court removed the case from a low­er court and set argu­ment for one week before Tennessee’s sched­uled October 11 exe­cu­tion of Edmund Zagorski. Previously, the court denied a stay of…

In a case high­light­ing con­gres­sion­al lim­i­ta­tions on the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry’s abil­i­ty to redress mis­car­riages of jus­tice, a Texas fed­er­al judge has denied relief to a death-row pris­on­er who the court believes was denied a fair tri­al and may well be…

The U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ment in Madison v. Alabama on October 2, 2018 on whether an Alabama death-row pris­on­er who has vas­cu­lar demen­tia, brain dam­age, cog­ni­tive deficits, and mem­o­ry loss from two near-fatal strokes is com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. During oral argu­ment, Bryan Stevenson (pic­tured), the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Equal Justice Initiative, told the jus­tices that, as a result of severe and…

Florida lawyer Patrick Megaro is fac­ing an offi­cial com­plaint by the North Carolina State Bar for alleged­ly defraud­ing death-row exonerees Henry McCollum (pic­tured, right) and Leon Brown (pic­tured, left), and tak­ing a third of the com­pen­sa­tion grant­ed to the two men. Half-broth­ers McCollum and Brown were exon­er­at­ed in 2014 after spend­ing 30 years in prison, some on death row, for the rape and mur­der of an 11-year-old girl. Both men are intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, a fac­tor that…

Finding that the Nevada Department of Corrections act­ed in ​“bad faith” to obtain the drug mida­zo­lam through ​“sub­terfuge,” a Las Vegas tri­al court has issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion bar­ring the state from using its sup­ply of that drug in car­ry­ing out any exe­cu­tion. The 43-page rul­ing issued by Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez (pic­tured) on September 28, 2018 effec­tive­ly freezes efforts by Nevada pros­e­cu­tors to exe­cute Scott Dozier, who has waived his…

A fed­er­al judge in Vermont has accept­ed a plea deal between Donald Fell and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, per­ma­nent­ly remov­ing Fell from death row and end­ing a case that had raised seri­ous ques­tions about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Under the terms of the deal, approved by U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford on September 28, 2018, Fell will serve a sen­tence of life with­out parole for the inter­state kid­nap­ping and mur­der of…

An Arkansas ethics board has filed dis­ci­pli­nary charges against six mem­bers of the Arkansas Supreme Court alleg­ing that they vio­lat­ed the canons of judi­cial ethics in remov­ing a tri­al judge from all death-penal­ty cas­es as a result of the judge’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in an anti-death-penalty…