Publications & Testimony

In a rul­ing three dis­senters crit­i­cized as an ​“out­lier,” and after hav­ing been rebuked by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 for ignor­ing the med­ical con­sen­sus defin­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, a sharply divid­ed (5 – 3) Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) has upheld the death sen­tence imposed on Bobby James Moore (pic­tured) 38 years ago. On June 6, 2018, the CCA ruled that Bobby Moore is not intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled under the most recent clin­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion of the…

A severe­ly men­tal­ly ill Texas death-row pris­on­er who gouged out his eyes and ate one of them has asked a fed­er­al appeals court to allow him to appeal a low­er court deci­sion that upheld his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence and found that he had been com­pe­tent to stand…

A gay man on death row in South Dakota has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case and to rule that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for jurors to impose the death penal­ty based upon anti-gay ani­mus and stereo­types. Charles Rhines (pic­tured) argues that South Dakota’s courts improp­er­ly refused to con­sid­er evi­dence — includ­ing an affi­davit from one of his jurors that the jury ​“knew that he was a homo­sex­u­al and thought that he shouldn’t be able to spend his life…

Over a strong dis­sent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor (pic­tured), the United States Supreme Court on June 4 declined to review the case of Texas con­demned pris­on­er Carlos Trevino, who had argued that his lawyer was inef­fec­tive for fail­ing to inves­ti­gate and present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence of Trevino’s brain dam­age and devel­op­men­tal delays from his exten­sive pre­na­tal expo­sure to alco­hol. Having failed to inves­ti­gate, Trevino’s lawyer pre­sent­ed only a sin­gle witness…

The Movement for Black Lives has called for abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in the United States, assert­ing that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is a racist lega­cy of slav­ery, lynch­ing, and Jim Crow that ​“deval­ues Black lives.” A Spring 2018 arti­cle in the University of Chicago’s phi­los­o­phy jour­nal Ethics, co-authored by Michael Cholbi, Professor of Philosophy at California State Polytechnic University and Alex Madva, Assistant Professor of…

A fed­er­al dis­trict court has ordered the Alabama Department of Corrections to release its lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col and unseal tran­scripts and plead­ings relat­ed to the failed exe­cu­tion of Doyle Hamm. In a May 30, 2018, order, Judge Karon Owen Bowdre, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama said ​“how Alabama car­ries out its exe­cu­tions” is ​“a mat­ter of great pub­lic con­cern,” and ruled that the…

Facing an August 2018 expi­ra­tion date for two of the drugs in Nebraska​’s exper­i­men­tal exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, state Attorney General Douglas Peterson (pic­tured) has asked the Nebraska Supreme Court to expe­dite con­sid­er­a­tion of the pros­e­cu­tor’s request to set a July exe­cu­tion date for con­demned pris­on­er Carey Dean Moore. The attor­ney gen­er­al has peti­tioned the court to sched­ule Moore’s exe­cu­tion for July 10 ​“or alter­na­tive­ly for a date in…

In his May 20 col­umn in the Sunday New York Times, Pulitzer Prize win­ning colum­nist Nicholas Kristof (pic­tured, left) focused nation­al atten­tion on the trou­bling case of California death-row pris­on­er, Kevin Cooper (pic­tured, right) and the dis­turb­ing evi­dence sug­gest­ing that San Bernardino police plant­ed blood and oth­er evi­dence to frame him for mur­der. Kristof joined DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham for a…

Courts in Idaho and Indiana are grap­pling with how to respond to legal chal­lenges to lethal-injec­tion secre­cy laws after cor­rec­tions offi­cials in both states refused to release exe­cu­tion infor­ma­tion request­ed under state pub­lic records laws. In both states, offi­cials refused to pro­vide details about exe­cu­tion drugs and their sources, say­ing that state law insu­lates the infor­ma­tion from public…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion vacat­ing the con­vic­tion of Patrick Dwayne Murphy (pic­tured), a Native-American pris­on­er sen­tenced to death in Oklahoma state court for a mur­der he argues could only be pros­e­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. On May 21, 2018, the Court grant­ed Oklahoma’s peti­tion to review an August 2017 deci­sion by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruling…