Publications & Testimony

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…

A Colorado Springs jury reject­ed a death sen­tence for Glen Law Galloway (pic­tured), mark­ing the third high-pro­file case since 2015 in which Colorado jurors have select­ed a life sen­tence over death. The ver­dict brought to an end El Paso County​’s first cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion in more than a decade, after a six-week tri­al in a court­room with a $50,000 makeover that includ­ed new audio and video tech­nol­o­gy and a remod­eled jury box enlarged to…

Eight days before the sched­uled July 11, 2018 exe­cu­tion of Scott Dozier, the Nevada Department of Corrections issued a new lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, switch­ing the drugs the state intends to use in car­ry­ing out his exe­cu­tion. On July 3, the Department announced that it plans to use an untest­ed three-drug pro­to­col of the seda­tive mida­zo­lam, the opi­oid fen­tanyl, and the par­a­lyt­ic cisatracuri­um. The last-minute change prompt­ed an emer­gency fil­ing by the ACLU of…

Lindy Isonhood (click to enlarge pic­ture) served on the Mississippi jury that sen­tenced Bobby Wilcher to death in 1994. In a com­men­tary pub­lished on Medium, she writes that the deci­sion to con­demn Wilcher ​“continue[s] to haunt me today.” Isonhood — whose expe­ri­ence as a death-penal­ty juror is the sub­ject of a new doc­u­men­tary film, Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2—explains how lit­tle she and her fel­low jurors knew about the…

As its 2017 – 2018 term came to a close, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review two Mississippi cas­es that pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as imple­ment­ed in that state and across the coun­try. Over the dis­sent of Justice Stephen Breyer (pic­tured), who renewed his call for the Court to review the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty as a whole, the Court on June 29 denied cer­tio­rari in the cas­es of Timothy Evans and…

Two men charged with killing Philadelphia Police Sgt. Robert Wilson III have been sen­tenced to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, plus an addi­tion­al term of 50 to 100 years, as pros­e­cu­tors in one of the nation’s largest death-penal­ty coun­ties agreed not to seek the death penal­ty in exchange for the defen­dants’ guilty pleas. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (pic­tured) appeared in court on June 25 to personally…

Justice Anthony Kennedy (pic­tured) announced on June 27, 2018, that he will retire from the U.S. Supreme Court. During Kennedy’s thir­ty years on the Court, he became known as a swing vote, sid­ing with both the con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al wings of the Court. His role as the Court’s swing vote extend­ed to some cru­cial death-penal­ty cas­es, includ­ing Roper v. Simmons (2005), in which the jus­tices struck down the death penal­ty for juve­nile offenders under…