Publications & Testimony

Paul Skalnik is a sex offender and con man whose jailhouse ​“snitch” testimony was used by Florida and Texas prosecutors to convict more than 37 defendants, including four who were sentenced to death. His testimony that James Dailey (pictured) allegedly confessed to the brutal 1985 stabbing and drowning death of 14-year-old Shelley Boggio contributed to Dailey’s conviction and death sentence, despite the prosecution’s admission that no ​“physical evidence,” ​“no fingerprints,” and ​“no hair or…

The death penalty has now disappeared from whole regions of the country and continues to erode in others, according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s 2019 Year End Report. With New Hampshire’s repeal of its capital punishment statute in May, 21 states have now abolished the death penalty, with nine having done so since 2004. In March, California Governor Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions on the nation’s largest death row, joining governors in Oregon, Colorado, and…

A Mississippi trial judge has released Curtis Flowers on $250,000 bail, while prosecutors decide whether to attempt to try him a seventh time for a quadruple murder he has long maintained he did not commit. Flowers (pictured right, with defense co-counsel Henderson Hill) was freed on December 16, 2019, after an anonymous donor posted his bond. He had spent the last 23 years in jail, most of it on death row. In July 1996, four employees of a white-owned furniture store in Winona, Mississippi…

NEWS — December 20: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled against Ohio death-row prisoners in their challenge to the state’s lethal injection process. The ruling came in connection with an appeal by Warren Keith Henness of an Ohio district court’s decision denying his request for an injunction and for a stay of execution. NEWS — December 20: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has granted a reprieve to has granted a reprieve to Melvin Bonnell, rescheduling Bonnell’s Feb. 12, 2020…

Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pictured) sought to overturn his conviction and federal death sentence on Thursday, arguing in a federal appeals court that he could not get a fair trial in a city still traumatized by the attack. During the two-hour argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston on December 12, 2019, they also claimed Tsarnaev was denied an impartial jury when the trial court prohibited him from asking jurors about their exposure…

In his last series of acts before leaving office, outgoing Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin (pictured) has commuted the sentences of two of the state’s longest serving death-row prisoners to life with the possibility of parole. On Friday, December 6, 2019, Bevin commuted the death sentence of Gregory Wilson, whose trial proceedings had been described as a travesty of justice. Then on Monday, December 9 — the governor’s last day in office — he commuted Leif Halvorsen’s death sentence in response to…

When Indiana executed Matthew Wrinkles on December 11, 2009, it was the twentieth execution carried out since the state reinstated the death penalty in May of 1973. It was also the last execution the state has carried out. A decade later, Indiana has now joined the list of 32 states that no longer have the death penalty or have not executed anyone in at least 10 years. (Click here to enlarge map.) No Indiana jury has sentenced a defendant to die since 2013. Although the United States has…

Texas is preparing to execute Travis Runnels (pictured) on December 11, 2019 based on the ​“expert” testimony of a prosecution investigator whose false depiction of prison conditions has helped to put fifteen defendants on the state’s death row. If Runnels is executed, he will be the third person put to death in Texas this year after former Texas Special Prosecution Unit criminal investigator, A.P. Merillat provided false testimony at their trials. Runnels was convicted and sentenced to death…

The United States Supreme Court has denied an application by the U.S. Department of Justice to lift a federal court injunction blocking the federal government from carrying out four executions scheduled for December 2019 and January 2020. The Court’s unanimous ruling, issued Friday evening December 6, ensures that there will be no federal executions in 2019. On July 25, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the federal government intended to restart federal executions and that…

A federal appeals court has reversed the conviction of Arizona death-row prisoner Barry Jones (pictured) based on medical evidence suggesting that he may not have committed the murder for which he was sentenced to death. On November 29, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit threw out Jones’ convictions for child abuse, sexual assault, and felony murder of his girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter amid doubts about the prosecution’s claims that Jones had battered and sexually…