Publications & Testimony

The California Supreme Court has declined to review the petitions of two Los Angeles County defendants who had asked the Court to halt capital prosecutions in the wake of Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision to impose a moratorium on executions. The defendants had argued that there was an unconstitutional risk that jurors’ knowledge about the much-publicized moratorium would lead them to believe that any death sentence they might impose was unlikely to be carried out and would therefore diminish…

NEWS — September 19: Oregon Governor Kate Brown has announced she will not call a special session to address whether the state’s new law limiting the types of murders punishable by death applies to future resentencing proceedings for prisoners currently on the state’s death row. The new law, which goes into effect on September 29, is not retroactive and would not overturn existing death sentences. However, it applies to all future capital sentencing proceedings, including resentencings of…

As the September 11, 2019 Pennsylvania Supreme Court argument date approached in two cases challenging the constitutionality of the state’s death penalty, commentators and stakeholders weighed in on the case in op-eds across the state. These opinion articles highlighted the work of a June 2018 report by the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment that found deep flaws in the administration of the Commonwealth’s death penalty, as well as the experiences of exonerees…

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court (members pictured) heard oral argument on September 11, 2019 on whether to exercise its extraordinary ​“King’s Bench” powers to determine whether the death penalty, as currently applied in the Commonwealth, violates the Pennsylvania constitution. If the court agrees to reach the constitutional issue, it has the power to strike down the death penalty, uphold its constitutionality, or issue directives or standards regarding its future use. Assistant federal defender…

Saying that ​“suffocation does not qualify as ​‘severe pain and needless suffering,’” a federal appeals court in Ohio has ruled that the state’s three-drug execution protocol does not violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. On September 11, 2019, a panel of the Cincinnati-based United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected an appeal by death-row prisoner Warren Henness (pictured), who had argued that the state’s execution plan was…

Texas executed Mark Soliz (pictured) on September 10, 2019, after a federal appeals court denied him a stay and dismissed his claim that his lifelong mental impairments resulting from fetal alcohol syndrome should exempt him from execution. Soliz had sought a stay and to be resentenced to life without parole, arguing that his mother’s alcohol consumption during her pregnancy impaired his intellectual development in a manner that was the “‘functional equivalent’ of conditions already recognized…

A coalition of national and local Jewish organizations and lawyers have asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop the scheduled October 10, 2019 execution of a Jewish death-row prisoner to review his claim that the judge before whom he was tried was racist and anti-Semitic. Randy Halprin (pictured) was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial presided over by Dallas County Judge Vickers Cunningham, who referred to Halprin as a ​“f***ing Jew” and a ​“G*dd**n k**e” and called Halprin’s…

NEWS — September 10: Texas’ execution of Mark Soliz was the 1505^th execution in the U.S. since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the 1970s. Texas has carried out 37.5% of all executions during that period. It was the 15^th execution in the U.S. in 2019, and the 6^th in Texas. Nine of the 17 pending executions scheduled in the U.S. in the rest of 2019 are in Texas. NEWS — September 12: The U.S Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has granted a new trial to death-row prisoner William Leroy…

Thirty-three years after a trial a federal appeals court described as ​“a mixture of disturbing prosecutorial misconduct and woefully inadequate assistance of counsel,” a Las Vegas trial court freed Paul Browning (pictured) from Nevada’s death row. On August 21, 2019, Clark County District Judge Douglas Herndon — who in March had dismissed murder and related charges against Browning — ordered state corrections officials to release Browning from custody pending the outcome of the prosecution’s…

Thirty-two years after he was sentenced to death in a trial tainted by prosecutorial misconduct, Tennessee death-row prisoner Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman (pictured) has been resentenced to life in prison. On August 30, 2019, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins approved a plea deal reached between Abdur’Rahman and Nashville prosecutors, vacated Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence, and in its place imposed three consecutive life sentences. Abdur’Rahman, who faced an April 16, 2020 execution…