Publications & Testimony

In a 7 – 2 decision, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Curtis Giovanni Flowers, a Mississippi death row prisoner who has been tried six times for a notorious 1996 quadruple murder in Winona, Mississippi. Three of the first five trials ended in convictions that were overturned on appeal and two trials resulted in hung juries. The lead prosecutor for all six trials was Doug Evans, the District Attorney in Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District. In the sixth trial, the defense…

A Missouri death-row prisoner whose rare medical condition, he says, risks making his execution by lethal injection a gruesome and grisly spectacle is seeking clemency from Missouri Governor Mike Parson ahead of his October 1, 2019 execution date. Russell Bucklew (pictured) suffers from cavernous hemangioma, a condition that causes blood-filled tumors to form in his head and neck. His lawyers have asked Parson to commute his death sentence on humanitarian grounds, saying his tumors are likely…

NEWS — October 3 – 4, 2019: In the span of two days, three new death sentences were imposed and three executions were halted across the United States. On October 3, a federal jury in South Carolina sentenced Brandon Council (pictured) to death for the murders of two white female bank employees during the course of a bank robbery. The same day, an Ohio three-judge panel sentenced George Brinkman to death for the murders of a Stark County couple. Brinkman had waived a jury trial and asked for the…

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery (pictured) has asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to set execution dates for an unprecedented nine death-row prisoners, the largest execution request in the modern history of Tennessee’s death penalty. On the same day, September 20, 2019, Slatery attempted to intervene in the case of death-row prisoner Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman to reactivate his death warrant and undo a court-approved plea deal with Nashville prosecutors that would overturn his death…

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…