Publications & Testimony

On August 14, 2018, more than two decades after last putting a pris­on­er to death, Nebraska exe­cut­ed Carey Dean Moore (pic­tured). The exe­cu­tion — which used an untest­ed drug for­mu­la of diazepam (the seda­tive Valium), fen­tanyl cit­rate (an opi­oid painkiller), cisatracuri­um besy­late (a par­a­lyt­ic), and potas­si­um chlo­ride to stop the heart — took 23 min­utes. It was the state’s first exe­cu­tion ever by lethal…

The Florida Supreme Court has halt­ed the exe­cu­tion of Jose Antonio Jimenez (pic­tured), sched­uled for August 14,…

Over sharp dis­sents by jus­tices of the U.S. and Tennessee Supreme Courts and lin­ger­ing ques­tions about the pris­on­er’s his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness and the effi­ca­cy of the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, Tennessee exe­cut­ed Billy Ray Irick (pic­tured) on August 9. He was the first per­son exe­cut­ed by the state since 2009. Justice Sonia Sotomayor described the process as a ​“rush to exe­cute” and a descent into…

Less than a month after a Nevada court halt­ed the exe­cu­tion of Scott Dozier in response to a law­suit filed by gener­ic-drug man­u­fac­tur­er Alvogen, anoth­er drug com­pa­ny has sued Nebraska, seek­ing to block the use of its med­i­cines in an upcoming…

In an elec­tion viewed as a ref­er­en­dum on racial jus­tice and crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, death-penal­ty oppo­nent Wesley Bell (pic­tured, left) sound­ly defeat­ed sev­en-term incum­bent, Robert McCulloch (pic­tured, right) for the Democratic nom­i­na­tion for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney. With no Republican oppo­si­tion in the gen­er­al elec­tion, Bell, a Ferguson, Missouri, city coun­cil mem­ber, is expect­ed to become…

Two ser­vice­men — one a for­mer air­man on the U.S. mil­i­tary death row, anoth­er a dec­o­rat­ed Vietnam vet­er­an sen­tenced to death in Pennsylvania—have won relief from their cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled on July 27, 2018 that Christopher S. McDaniel (pic­tured), an inves­tiga­tive reporter for BuzzFeed News, may pro­ceed with his law­suit chal­leng­ing the Missouri Department of Corrections’s pol­i­cy for select­ing exe­cu­tion wit­ness­es. McDaniel, who has writ­ten numer­ous arti­cles expos­ing irreg­u­lar­i­ties in Missouri’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures, applied to the Director of the Department of Corrections in 2014 to witness…

A fed­er­al dis­trict court has vacat­ed the mur­der con­vic­tion of Arizona death-row pris­on­er Barry Jones (pic­tured) in the death of 4‑year-old Rachel Gray, and has ordered the state to imme­di­ate­ly retry or release Jones. On July 31, 2018, U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess grant­ed a new tri­al to Jones, who has spent 23 years on Arizona’s death row, find­ing that if Jones had been com­pe­tent­ly rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al, ​“there is a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty that his jury…

Pope Francis (pic­tured) has for­mal­ly changed the offi­cial Catholic Church teach­ing on the death penal­ty, call­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“an attack on the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty of the per­son” and deem­ing it ​“inad­mis­si­ble” in all…

On August 2, 2018, the Vatican announced that it had for­mal­ly changed the offi­cial Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penal­ty, call­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“an attack on the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty of the per­son” and deem­ing it ​“inad­mis­si­ble” in all…