Publications & Testimony

Anthony Boyd is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Alabama on October 23, 2025, for his role in the 1993 kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Gregory​“New York” Huguley. Mr. Boyd was con­vict­ed based sole­ly on eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny with no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing him to the crime, and he has main­tained his inno­cence. Alabama will exe­cute Mr. Boyd using nitro­gen gas, the sev­enth time state has used this con­tro­ver­sial method since January 2024, when the state exe­cut­ed Kenneth Smith in…

On October 13, 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed the lat­est set of amend­ments to California’s Racial Justice Act (CRJA) into law, strength­en­ing a ground­break­ing piece of leg­is­la­tion that pro­hibits crim­i­nal con­vic­tions and sen­tences based on race, eth­nic­i­ty, or nation­al ori­gin. Under this law, cap­i­tal­ly con­vict­ed pris­on­ers can pur­sue mean­ing­ful relief, beyond just the rever­sal of a death sen­tence, if the state is found to have violated these…

Edward T. Blake, a foren­sic sci­en­tist who helped pio­neer the use of DNA analy­sis in crim­i­nal cas­es and whose work helped exon­er­ate more than 50 peo­ple, includ­ing those on death row, died in August 2025 at age 80 from pan­cre­at­ic can­cer. Dr. Blake was the first foren­sic sci­en­tist to use poly­merase chain reac­tion test­ing, or PCR, on crime-scene DNA. The tech­nique allowed Dr. Blake to extract usable genet­ic infor­ma­tion from evi­dence sam­ples that could not previously…

Update: Mr. Shockley was exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion on October 14. He was pro­nounced dead at 6:13 p.m. Yesterday, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe denied clemen­cy to Lance Shockley, who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion today at 6 p.m. However, a recent sur­vey found that Missouri vot­ers, by a bipar­ti­san two-thirds major­i­ty, would pre­fer to see Mr. Shockley’s death sen­tence com­mut­ed. Dr. Nicholas Scurich of the University of California, Irvine, found that 65% of the 440…

October 9, 2025 UPDATE: On October 9, 2025, just a week before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) grant­ed Robert Roberson a stay of exe­cu­tion and remand­ed his case to the dis­trict court for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion of his request for relief based upon relief offered in a sim­i­lar case, Ex parte Roark. Like Mr. Roberson’s case, Ex parte Roark**, also involved a con­vic­tion based the now…

October 9, 2025 UPDATE: On October 9, 2025, just a week before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) grant­ed Robert Roberson a stay of exe­cu­tion and remand­ed his case to the dis­trict court for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion of his request for relief based upon relief offered in a sim­i­lar case, Ex parte Roark. Like Mr. Roberson’s case, Ex parte Roark**, also involved a con­vic­tion based the now dis­cred­it­ed​“Shaken…

In an order dat­ed September 30, 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court set an exe­cu­tion date for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. If her exe­cu­tion pro­ceeds as sched­uled on September 30, 2026, Ms. Pike will be the first woman exe­cut­ed in the state in more than 200 years and the only per­son exe­cut­ed in Tennessee for a crime com­mit­ted at age 18, 19 or 20 in the mod­ern death penal­ty era. > ​“Life impris­on­ment is a prop­er pun­ish­ment for Christa, just as it…