Publications & Testimony

Ohio Governor John Kasich (pic­tured, left) has com­mut­ed the death sen­tence imposed on Raymond Tibbetts (pic­tured, right) to life with­out parole, in response to a juror’s con­cerns about the unfair­ness of the sen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings in the case. It was the sev­enth time Kasich had com­mut­ed a pris­on­er’s death…

A Louisiana fed­er­al court judge has ordered that exe­cu­tions in the state be stayed for at least anoth­er year. On July 16, 2018, in pro­ceed­ings brought by Louisiana death-row pris­on­ers chal­leng­ing the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick grant­ed a request by state offi­cials to extend by one year the tem­po­rary stay of exe­cu­tion that has been in effect in Louisiana since 2014. Jeffrey Cody, the state’s lawyer in the case, told the court that…

Against the wish­es of the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly and amidst charges that the rejec­tion of his clemen­cy appli­ca­tion was root­ed in racial bias, Texas exe­cut­ed Christopher Young (pic­tured) on July 17, 2018. Young — who had been drunk and high on drugs when he killed Hashmukh Patel dur­ing a failed rob­bery in 2004 — had repeat­ed­ly expressed remorse for the mur­der and had been men­tor­ing trou­bled youth in an effort to pre­vent them from repeat­ing his mis­takes. The vic­tim’s son,…

A new poll of like­ly vot­ers in Washington State shows that Washingtonians are near­ly 3 times more like­ly to pre­fer some form of a life sen­tence to the death penal­ty as pun­ish­ment for defen­dants con­vict­ed of…

The U.S. Air Force has announced that the Guantánamo mil­i­tary commission’s USS Cole death-penal­ty judge, Air Force Colonel Vance Spath (pic­tured) is retir­ing, inject­ing new uncer­tain­ty into war court pro­ceed­ings already steeped in chaos. In a one-sen­tence email to the McClatchey news ser­vice on July 5, an Air Force spokesper­son con­firmed that Spath ​“has an approved retire­ment date of Nov. 1, 2018,” well before the con­tro­ver­sial tri­al pro­ceed­ings in the…

Alabama will not exe­cute eight death-row pris­on­ers by means of the prob­lem­at­ic lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col they have been chal­leng­ing, but will instead car­ry out the exe­cu­tions using lethal gas. In a Joint Motion to Dismiss the pris­on­ers’ fed­er­al lit­i­ga­tion over the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, filed on July 10, 2018, the par­ties agreed that the law­suit had been ren­dered moot by the state’s pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion autho­riz­ing exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas and the pris­on­ers’ election…

In response to a law­suit filed by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­er Alvogen, Inc., a Clark County, Nevada District Judge has stayed the July 11, 2018, exe­cu­tion of Scott Dozier and issued a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order bar­ring Nevada from using drugs pro­duced by Alvogen to execute…

A new study of Tennessee’s death penal­ty con­cludes that the state’s cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment sys­tem is ​“a cru­el lot­tery” that is ​“rid­dled with…

A joint com­mit­tee of the Kentucky leg­is­la­ture con­duct­ed a hear­ing on July 6, 2018 on the Commonwealth’s rarely used death penal­ty, includ­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion by sup­port­ers and oppo­nents of a bill to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary took tes­ti­mo­ny from pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, cor­rec­tion­al offi­cials, and leg­is­la­tors on issues rang­ing from costs and arbi­trari­ness to the length of the appeal…

Justice Anthony Kennedy​’s votes swung both to the right and to the left on death-penal­ty issues, pro­fes­sors Carol Steiker (pic­tured, l.) of Harvard Law School and her broth­er, Jordan Steiker (pic­tured, r.) of the University of Texas School of Law write in a com­men­tary for SCOTUSblog, ​“but [he] declined to swing for the fences.” The Steikers, who co-authored the acclaimed book, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and Capital…