Publications & Testimony

In three days of bulk deci­sion-mak­ing, the Florida Supreme Court has denied new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings to more than thir­ty death-row pris­on­ers, declin­ing to enforce its bar against non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences to cas­es that became final on appeal before June 2002. At least 24 of the pris­on­ers who were denied relief had been uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death after non-unan­i­mous jury sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, includ­ing three pris­on­ers—Etheria Verdell…

Lawyers for 67-year-old Vernon Madison (pic­tured), a death-row pris­on­er whose diag­no­sis of ​“irre­versible and pro­gres­sive” vas­cu­lar demen­tia has left him with no mem­o­ry of the crime for which he was sen­tenced to death, have filed a motion to stay his January 25 exe­cu­tion in Alabama. In a peti­tion for writ of cer­tio­rari and motion for stay of exe­cu­tion filed January 18 in the U.S. Supreme Court, Madison’s lawyers argue that the courts wrong­ly found Madison…

Kent Whitaker, who sur­vived a shoot­ing in which his wife, Tricia and younger son, Kevin were mur­dered, has asked the state of Texas to spare the life of his only remain­ing son, Thomas ​“Bart” Whitaker (pic­tured), who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for their mur­ders. Kent Whitaker told the Austin American-Statesman, ​“I have seen too much killing already. I don’t want to see him exe­cut­ed right there in front of my eyes,” he said.

A pros­e­cu­tor’s duty, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1935, ​“is not that it shall win a case, but that jus­tice shall be done.” Yet pros­e­cu­tors across the U.S. have refused to acknowl­edge the inno­cence of defen­dants who have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, obstruct­ing release by retry­ing death-sen­tenced defen­dants despite exon­er­at­ing evi­dence, or con­di­tion­ing their release upon ​“Alford pleas,” which force defen­dants to choose between clear­ing their names or obtain­ing their free­dom. In an arti­cle for…

The jus­tices of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be favor­ing argu­ments pre­sent­ed by Louisiana death-row pris­on­er Robert McCoy (pic­tured), who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death after his lawyer, in the face of repeat­ed instruc­tions from his client to argue his inno­cence, instead told the jury that McCoy had killed three fam­i­ly mem­bers. McCoy’s tri­al lawyer, Larry English, said he ignored his clien­t’s instruc­tions and con­ced­ed guilt hop­ing jurors would…

For the sec­ond time in four months, a Missouri judge has imposed a death sen­tence after a cap­i­tal-sen­tenc­ing jury did not reach a unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing deci­sion. Greene County Circuit Judge Thomas Mountjoy sen­tenced 49-year-old Craig Wood (pic­tured) to death on January 11 for the February 2014 killing of 10-year-old Hailey Owens. Wood was con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der in November 2017, but the jury — empan­eled from out-of-coun­ty jurors as a…

With the back­ing of the state’s gov­er­nor and attor­ney gen­er­al, Democratic and Republican spon­sors of a bill to repeal Washington’s cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment statute have expressed opti­mism that the state may abol­ish the death penal­ty in 2018. In 2017, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, was joined by for­mer Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, in call­ing on the leg­is­la­ture to end the state’s death penal­ty. Ferguson, who has said “[t]here is no role for capital…

States that have recent­ly abol­ished the death penal­ty have not expe­ri­enced the ​“parade of hor­ri­bles” — includ­ing increased mur­der rates — pre­dict­ed by death-penal­ty pro­po­nents, accord­ing to death-penal­ty experts who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the 2017 American Bar Association nation­al meet­ing in New York City. Instead, the pan­elists said, abo­li­tion appears to have cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to move for­ward with oth­er broad­er crim­i­nal justice…