Publications & Testimony

A federal district court has granted a stay of execution to a Buddhist death-row prisoner in Texas over allegations that the state is discriminatorily denying him access to religious services that would be available to Christian prisoners on the day of their execution. On November 7, 2019, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas stayed the November 13 execution of Patrick Murphy (pictured), marking the second time in 2019 that his execution has been stayed over…

NEWS — November 13: A Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio judge has imposed a death sentence on Matthew Nicholson for the murders of his girlfriend’s teenage children. It was the third death sentence imposed in Cuyahoga County in 2019, more than in any other county in the country. Cuyahoga County also imposed two death sentences in 2018, making it the only county to impose more than one death sentence in both of the last two years. The five death sentences in that period are also the most in the…

On March 16, 2017, saying that capital punishment is ​“not in the best interests of this community or in the best interests of justice,” Orange/​Osceola County (FL) state prosecutor Aramis Ayala announced that her office would not pursue the death penalty in any case. That decision, announced in connection with the prosecution of a man charged with killing his ex-girlfriend, her unborn child, and a police officer responding to the crime, ignited a political firestorm in which then-Florida Gov.

Texas executed Justen Hall (pictured) on November 6, 2019 in the second Texas case of the year to present significant questions as to a prisoner’s competency to be executed. Hall, a mentally ill death-row prisoner who had given up his appeals, had attempted suicide and had told courts on multiple occasions that he wanted to be executed. His lawyers — with whom he had refused to speak since 2017 — said Hall exhibited symptoms of serious mental illness, including hallucinations, paranoia, and…

After being reversed twice by the United States Supreme Court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) has resentenced intellectually disabled death-row prisoner Bobby James Moore to life in prison. In a three-page decision issued on November 6, 2019, 39 years after Moore was sentenced to death in Houston for a 1980 murder during a supermarket robbery, the CCA conceded that the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that ​“Moore … is a person with intellectual disability.” Given that determination…

The prosecutor who sent Thomas Creech, Idaho’s longest-serving death-row prisoner, to jail 37 years ago now says that Creech and others sentenced to death in the Gem State should not be executed. Jim Harris (pictured), former County Prosecutor for Ada County, sought the death penalty against Creech in 1982. Creech, who was first sentenced to death in another case in 1976, has spent more time in prison than any other person on the state’s death row, but in the years since Harris obtained a…

Whether South Dakota death-row prisoner Charles Rhines (pictured) lives or dies may depend less on whether he was constitutionally convicted and sentenced to death and more on whether the courts value finality more than they value fairness. As Rhines filed two separate petitions in the U.S. Supreme Court and an appeal in the South Dakota Supreme Court on November 1, the South Dakota Department of Corrections announced that his execution, scheduled for the week of November 3, 2019, would be…

NEWS — November 8: Georgia death-row prisoner Ray Cromartie, scheduled to be executed November 13, filed a motion to reopen his federal habeas corpus proceedings based upon new evidence of innocence. Cromartie’s motion contains an affidavit from his co-defendant — prosecution witness, Thaddeus Lucas — that a second co-defendant, Corey Clark, had admitted to having shot Richard Slysz during the robbery of a convenience store. Cromartie was sentenced to death by the jury under the belief that he was…

Ten executions were scheduled to take place in October 2019, more than in any other month in the last two years. As the month closed, however, nine of those executions were not carried out. The 90% rate of warrant failures symbolizes the death penalty’s continuing decline and the widespread problems states are having with its implementation. And with eight active execution dates pending and two other stays of execution in place in November and December, 2019 is nearly certain to become the…

Three U.S. executions were halted on October 30, 2019, as the Georgia Supreme Court issued a day-of-execution stay to Ray Jefferson Cromartie and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (pictured) granted warrants of reprieve to the next two death-row prisoners scheduled for execution in Ohio. The actions capped a tumultuous October in which nine of ten scheduled executions did not take place and federal courts stayed two other executions set for later in the year. Shortly after noon on October 30, the Georgia…