Publications & Testimony

Lloyd Barrus (pic­tured, left) will not become the first per­son sen­tenced to death in Montana this cen­tu­ry, after pros­e­cu­tors dropped their pur­suit of the death penal­ty for the killing of a sher­if­f’s deputy. In a motion filed July 19, 2018, Broadwater County Attorney Cory Swanson (pic­tured, right) wrote that, ​“after exten­sive analy­sis of the Defendant’s his­to­ry of … men­tal ill­ness,” the state would no longer seek the death penal­ty in the…

Juries in two Broward County, Florida death-penal­ty tri­als have hand­ed down life sen­tences for four cap­i­tal defen­dants in the span of one week, high­light­ing the effect of a new Florida law requir­ing the unan­i­mous agree­ment of the jury before a defen­dant can be sen­tenced to death. On July 16, a Broward County jury spared three defen­dants—Eloyn Ingraham, Bernard Forbes, and Andre Delancy—whom it had con­vict­ed in March of…

Unable to legit­i­mate­ly pur­chase lethal-injec­tion drugs or car­ry out exe­cu­tions with­out reveal­ing who man­u­fac­tured its drugs, Arkansas has sus­pend­ed efforts to obtain a new sup­ply of exe­cu­tion drugs until state law is amend­ed to keep secret the iden­ti­ty of the drug…

Four African-American death-row pris­on­ers in North Carolina whose death sen­tences had been over­turned for racial dis­crim­i­na­tion have chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of sub­se­quent state court rul­ings that rein­stat­ed their death sen­tences and then denied them a new hear­ing on their dis­crim­i­na­tion claims. The four—Marcus Robinson (pic­tured), Tilmon Golphin, Quintel Augustine, and Christina Walters—had over­turned their death…

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…