Publications & Testimony

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…

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…