Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on November 6, 2018 in Bucklew v. Precythe on whether the use of lethal injec­tion to exe­cute a Missouri pris­on­er with a rare med­ical con­di­tion would cause him unnec­es­sary and excru­ci­at­ing pain and suf­fer­ing and whether he was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to pro­vide the state with a dif­fer­ent way for it to kill him. Media reports sug­gest­ed that the Court was sharply…

The results of the November 6, 2018 mid-term elec­tions reflect­ed America’s deeply divid­ed views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, as vot­ers elect­ed gov­er­nors who pledged not to resume exe­cu­tions in the three states with death-penal­­ty mora­to­ri­ums, defeat­ed an incum­bent who tried to bring back cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in a non-death-penal­­ty state (click on graph­ic to enlarge), and re-elec­t­ed gov­er­nors who had vetoed leg­is­la­tion abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in two other…

With new­ly dis­cov­ered con­fes­sions and DNA evi­dence point­ing to the prosecution’s chief wit­ness as the actu­al killer, pros­e­cu­tors dropped all charges against Clemente Javier Aguirre (pic­tured, cen­ter, at his exon­er­a­tion) in a Seminole County, Florida court­room on November 5, 2018. The dis­missal of the charges made Aguirre the 164^th wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed death-row pris­on­er to be exon­er­at­ed in the United States since 1973 and the 28^th…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review whether a pros­e­cu­tor with a long his­to­ry of racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury-selec­­tion prac­tices uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly struck black jurors in the tri­al of Mississippi death-row pris­on­er Curtis Giovanni Flowers (pic­tured). On November 2, 2018, the Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari in the Flowers’s case on the ques­tion of “[w]hether the Mississippi Supreme Court erred in how it applied Batson v.

A divid­ed Arkansas Supreme Court has struck down the state’s death-penal­­ty men­tal com­pe­ten­cy law, hold­ing that statu­to­ry pro­vi­sions giv­ing the state’s prison direc­tor exclu­sive author­i­ty to deter­mine a death-row prisoner’s com­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed vio­late due process. The 4 – 3 rul­ings on November 1, 2018 were a vic­to­ry for two men­tal­ly ill death-row pris­on­ers, Bruce Ward (pic­tured, left) and Jack Greene…

Lawyers for Marcus Dansby (pic­tured), a defen­dant fac­ing cap­i­tal mur­der charges in Allen County, Indiana, have filed a motion ask­ing the tri­al judge to declare Indiana’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and to bar pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing death in his case. In plead­ings sub­mit­ted to the court on October 30, 2018 in sup­port of Dansby’s Motion to Declare Indiana’s Capital Sentencing Statute Unconstitutional, lawyers Michelle Kraus…

Since 2007, eleven states have abol­ished the death penal­ty; all uti­lize sen­tences of life with­out parole (LWOP). Those states have tak­en a vari­ety of approach­es in amend­ing their laws regard­ing crimes that were death eli­gi­ble. The chart below com­pares how the states address sentencing…

As Edmund Zagorski faces a November 1, 2018 exe­cu­tion in Tennessee, the courts have required him to choose between death by lethal injec­tion and elec­tro­cu­tion. His lawyers argue that both meth­ods, as well as the forced choice between the two, are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. In a law­suit filed in fed­er­al dis­trict court on October 26, 2018 and appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on October 30, Zagorski’s attor­ney, Kelley Henry,…

The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the death sen­tence imposed on William Roger Davis, III (pic­tured), even though Davis’s death sen­tence vio­lates both the Florida and fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tions. In a deci­sion issued on October 25, 2018, the court refused to redress the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death sen­tence — imposed by a tri­al court judge after a bare 7 – 5 major­i­ty of jurors had rec­om­mend­ed death — rul­ing that during…

The South Dakota Supreme Court has denied motions that sought to delay the October 29, 2018 exe­cu­tion of Rodney Berget (pic­tured). As the state pre­pared to exe­cute Berget, the for­mer pub­lic defend­er who rep­re­sent­ed him at tri­al took action to fight a prospec­tive legal guardian’s efforts to keep the for­mer Special Olympics par­tic­i­pant from being put to death. On Friday, October 26, Juliet Yackel, a Chicago-based lawyer who had…