Publications & Testimony

A Guantánamo mil­i­tary com­mis­sion judge has indef­i­nite­ly sus­pend­ed pro­ceed­ings in the death-penal­ty tri­al of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, accused of plan­ning al-Qaida’s alleged 2000 bomb­ing of the Navy war­ship USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. Expressing exas­per­a­tion over his con­tin­u­ing inabil­i­ty to com­pel civil­ian death-penal­ty lawyers to return to the case, Air Force Colonel Vance Spath (pic­tured) halt­ed the pro­ceed­ings on February 16. ​“I am…

Arizona death-row pris­on­er Barry Jones (pic­tured) has said for the twen­ty-three years he has been on death row that he nev­er raped or mur­dered his girl­friend’s 4‑year-old daugh­ter, Rachel Gray. In a pair of recent arti­cles for The Intercept, reporter Liliana Segura describes the incon­sis­tent med­ical tes­ti­mo­ny, police ​“tun­nel vision,” inept defense lawyer­ing, and oth­er ​“hall­marks of wrong­ful con­vic­tions” that led to a fed­er­al court evi­den­tiary hearing…

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly bars states from exe­cut­ing any per­son who has Intellectual Disability. (Daryl Atkins is pic­tured.) However, as report­ed in recent sto­ries in Pacific Standard Magazine and the news­pa­per, The Atlanta Black Star, some states have attempt­ed to cir­cum­vent the Atkins rul­ing by using social stereo­types and race as grounds to argue that defen­dants of col­or are not intellectually…

A bipar­ti­san bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty in Washington passed the state Senate on February 14 on a 26 – 22 vote. SB 6052 now moves to the House of Representatives, where the chair­woman of the House Judiciary Committee has said it will be giv­en a hear­ing. ​“Today, the Washington State Senate took an his­toric, bipar­ti­san vote, pass­ing Attorney General-request­ed leg­is­la­tion to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty and replace it with life in prison with­out possibility…

The sud­den fir­ing by U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis (left) of the Pentagon offi­cial who over­saw mil­i­tary com­mis­sion tri­als at Guantánamo Bay has raised con­cerns of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence in the already tumul­tuous legal pro­ceed­ings in the death-penal­ty tri­als of the five men charged with plot­ting the 9/​11 attacks on the United…

An analy­sis by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice of the cost of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has found that cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tors seek the death penal­ty are more cost­ly than cas­es in which life with­out parole was the max­i­mum sen­tence. The Commission’s Death Penalty Working Group reviewed recent stud­ies of death-penal­ty costs in Utah and across the coun­try and found that, while there was dis­agree­ment about the mag­ni­tude of the cost dif­fer­ence, there was consensus…

Five pris­on­ers on death row in Pennsylvania have filed a class-action law­suit chal­leng­ing the Commonwealth’s pol­i­cy man­dat­ing soli­tary con­fine­ment for all con­demned pris­on­ers. The five named plain­tiffs have been held in soli­tary con­fine­ment between 16 and 27 years each, kept in cells the size of a park­ing space, allowed out for a max­i­mum of two hours per day for exer­cise, and denied human con­tact with fam­i­ly mem­bers dur­ing prison vis­its. The pris­on­ers, rep­re­sent­ed by the…

Ohio Governor John Kasich (pic­tured, left) has grant­ed a reprieve to Raymond Tibbetts (pic­tured, right), tem­porar­i­ly halt­ing his exe­cu­tion to per­mit the Ohio Parole Board to con­sid­er a juror’s plea for mer­cy in the case. In a February 8 let­ter to parole board Chairman Andre Imbrogno, the Governor request­ed that the Board con­vene a hear­ing to con­sid­er con­cerns about the case raised by Ross Geiger, one of the Tibbetts jurors. To facil­i­tate that review, Kasich…

On February 5, the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to adopt a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the death penal­ty for offend­ers who were 21 or younger at the time of the crime. According to a report accom­pa­ny­ing the res­o­lu­tion, ​“there is a grow­ing med­ical con­sen­sus that key areas of the brain rel­e­vant to deci­sion-mak­ing and judg­ment con­tin­ue to devel­op into the ear­ly twen­ties.” The ABA first opposed apply­ing the death penal­ty against defen­dants younger…

Raymond Wallace Shuman (pic­tured), whose case led to a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion affirm­ing the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of manda­to­ry death sen­tences, has died in a Nevada prison at age 83. Shuman, one of the longest-incar­cer­at­ed pris­on­ers in Nevada his­to­ry, was serv­ing a life sen­tence for a 1958 mur­der when he was con­vict­ed of killing a fel­low pris­on­er in 1973. At that time, Nevada law man­dat­ed the death penal­ty for life-sen­tenced prisoners…