Publications & Testimony

The Kentucky Supreme Court has heard oral argument and will soon decide whether subjecting youthful offenders under age 21 to the death penalty violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. On September 19, 2019, the Court heard argument in the government’s appeals of two capital cases in which a trial judge barred county prosecutors from seeking the death penalty because the defendants charged with the murders were younger than age 21 when the killings took…

Texas is preparing to execute Robert Sparks (pictured, left), on September 25, 2019, as a second death-row prisoner, Stephen Barbee (pictured, below), received a stay from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Sparks’ case is the latest in which Texas prosecutors sought and obtained an execution warrant while appeals in the case were pending before state or federal courts. On May 6, 2019, Sparks court-appointed federal habeas counsel filed a petition for writ of certiorari asking the U.S.

Federal lawsuits filed by coalitions of media organizations in two states highlight recent media efforts to vindicate the public’s right to witness executions in their entirety. On September 17, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in a case brought by a coalition of Arizona media organizations that the First Amendment right to witness an execution encompasses the right to hear the execution in its entirety. On the heels of that ruling, four Virginia media organizations…

As U.S. taxpayers pick up a tab of more than $6 billion and climbing, former top officials involved in the military commission death-penalty cases against Guantánamo Bay detainees have blasted the military tribunals for waste, mismanagement, and ineffectiveness. NPR reported on the 18^th anniversary of the 9/​11 attacks that retired Air Force Col. Gary Brown (pictured), the former legal adviser to the head of Guantánamo’s military commissions, has filed a whistleblower complaint against the…

NEWS — September 26: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has declined to address the state constitutional challenge to the Commonwealth’s death penalty brought by two death-row prisoners. In a one-page per curiam order, the court denied the King’s Bench petitions filed by Russell Cox and Kevin Marinelli, which had asked the court to exercise its extraordinary jurisdiction to hear their challenge. The court ruled that “[d]iscrete review of properly presented claims will proceed in the individual cases…

As U.S. taxpayers pick up a tab of more than $6 billion and climbing, former top officials involved in the military commission death-penalty cases against Guantánamo Bay detainees have blasted the military tribunals for waste, mismanagement, and ineffectiveness. NPR reported on the 18^th anniversary of the attacks that retired Air Force Col. Gary Brown (pictured), the former legal adviser to the head of Guantánamo’s military commissions, has filed a whistleblower complaint against the…

A federal appeals court has vacated the death sentence imposed on a North Carolina death-row prisoner, finding that one of his jurors improperly consulted her pastor about her decision and then communicated the pastor’s advice to fellow jurors. In a 2 – 1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled on September 12, 2019 that William Leroy Barnes (pictured) had been denied his Sixth Amendment right to trial by an impartial jury and reversed a lower court ruling that had…

In February 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the conviction and death sentence of Tennessee death-row prisoner Andrew Lee Thomas, Jr., ruling that Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich had unconstitutionally withheld evidence that a key prosecution witness had been paid for her cooperation in the case and then deliberately elicited perjured testimony from the witness that she had not received ​“one red cent” for her cooperation. Last month, pro bono…

Defendants convicted of killing white victims in Georgia are 17 times more likely to be executed than those convicted of murdering black victims, a new study by researchers at the University of Denver has found, and the problem of discrimination is worsened by the appeal process. The study by Sociology and Criminology Professor Scott Phillips (pictured, left) and Law Professor Justin Marceau (pictured, below), to be published in an upcoming issue of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law…

Supporters of Rodney Reed (pictured) are calling for a new trial for the Texas death-row prisoner sentenced to death in 1998 by an all-white jury in a racially charged trial. On September 10, 2019, Reed’s family and supporters protested Texas’ death penalty outside the governor’s mansion in Austin. Their plea for a new trial based on evidence of his innocence has been joined by a growing chorus of supporters, which include the Innocence Project, the victim’s cousin, Texas state representative…