Publications & Testimony

Texas executed death-row prisoner Billy Jack Crutsinger on September 4, 2019, despite, his current lawyers say, having provided him with an incompetent appeals lawyer who repeatedly filed frivolous claims and cut and pasted contradictory claims and arguments from prior clients’ court pleadings. Crutsinger had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his execution to review whether the trial court’s appointment of a lawyer ​“who was not competent to represent the indigent, death-sentenced prisoner at…

The North Carolina Supreme Court (members pictured) heard arguments on August 26 and 27, 2019 on whether the state may retroactively apply the legislative repeal of its Racial Justice Act to death-row prisoners who had overturned their death sentences or filed claims under the act before it was repealed. Four prisoners had won reduced sentences under the state’s 2009 Racial Justice Act, which had allowed death-row prisoners to overturn their sentences if race had been a ​“significant factor” in…

NEWS — September 5: The Florida Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death sentence imposed on Shawn Rogers for a 2012 prison murder. Rogers was permitted to waive his right to counsel and represent himself at trial. After the jury unanimously recommended a death sentence, counsel was appointed to represent Rogers — over his objection — in a subsequent hearing in which the court sentenced him to death. The appeals court affirmed the judge’s determination that the aggravating circumstances…

In a year in which few states have carried out any executions, the aggressive execution practices of a single state — Texas — stand in sharp contrast. The Lone Star State has scheduled thirteen executions for the last five months of 2019, more than the rest of the country combined. And a DPIC review of the circumstances in which the warrants were issued raises troubling questions as to whether the state is executing the most morally culpable individuals for the worst of the worst crimes or the…

Thirty-seven years after his wrongful capital prosecution and conviction for a murder he did not commit, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has set Samuel Bonner free. Citing ​“gross prosecutorial misconduct” that he said ​“shocks the conscience,” Judge Daniel J. Lowenthal(pictured) on July 11, 2019 ordered Bonner released from California state prison. Bonner was capitally tried for an apartment robbery and murder in 1983 under a law that permitted defendants who neither committed a…

A more than $1.6 million price tag for prosecuting a Colorado death-penalty case that the victim’s family opposed and that resulted in a life sentence has caused some Coloradans to question whether capital prosecutions are worth the cost. On August 14, 2019, Miguel Contreras-Perez (pictured) was sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to the murder of a correctional officer and the attempted murder of another officer. The sentence came seven years after the murder and after Colorado…

In the latest episode of Discussions with DPIC, writer/​director Chinonye Chukwu (pictured) speaks with DPIC Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue about her award-winning new film Clemency. Chukwu discusses her inspiration for the story, the years-long process of research and immersion that helped her shape the narrative, and her hopes for how this film will be received. Clemency stars Alfre Woodard as death-row prison warden Bernadine Williams and Aldis Hodge as…

NEWS — August 30: A Tennessee trial judge has approved a plea deal to vacate the death sentence of Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman as a result of prosecutorial misconduct. Abdur’Rahman, who was scheduled to be executed next year, argued that prosecutor John Zimmerman excluded potential jurors based on race during Abdur’Rahman’s 1987 capital trial. The current district attorney’s office agreed with Abdur’Rahman that his trial was infected by ​“overt racial bias” and that as a result his sentence should be…

When Oregon’s legislators passed a new law limiting the scope of the state’s death penalty, the sponsors of the measure offered assurances that it would not apply retroactively to prisoners on the state’s death row. Now, a new legal opinion by the Oregon Department of Justice has raised questions as to how retroactive ​“not retroactive” actually is and whether the new law applies to legal proceedings involving current death-row prisoners whose convictions or death sentences may later be found to…

The turmoil surrounding Ohio’s death penalty continued to grow as public health experts criticized a legislator’s suggestion that the state use seized drugs to carry out executions and the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Larry Householder (pictured), expressed growing doubts about capital punishment itself. Governor Mike DeWine joined critics of the fentanyl proposal, declaring that it was ​“not an option” for resuming executions in the state. The future of Ohio’s execution…