Publications & Testimony

Facing an August 2018 expi­ra­tion date for two of the drugs in Nebraska​’s exper­i­men­tal exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, state Attorney General Douglas Peterson (pic­tured) has asked the Nebraska Supreme Court to expe­dite con­sid­er­a­tion of the pros­e­cu­tor’s request to set a July exe­cu­tion date for con­demned pris­on­er Carey Dean Moore. The attor­ney gen­er­al has peti­tioned the court to sched­ule Moore’s exe­cu­tion for July 10 ​“or alter­na­tive­ly for a date in…

In his May 20 col­umn in the Sunday New York Times, Pulitzer Prize win­ning colum­nist Nicholas Kristof (pic­tured, left) focused nation­al atten­tion on the trou­bling case of California death-row pris­on­er, Kevin Cooper (pic­tured, right) and the dis­turb­ing evi­dence sug­gest­ing that San Bernardino police plant­ed blood and oth­er evi­dence to frame him for mur­der. Kristof joined DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham for a…

Courts in Idaho and Indiana are grap­pling with how to respond to legal chal­lenges to lethal-injec­tion secre­cy laws after cor­rec­tions offi­cials in both states refused to release exe­cu­tion infor­ma­tion request­ed under state pub­lic records laws. In both states, offi­cials refused to pro­vide details about exe­cu­tion drugs and their sources, say­ing that state law insu­lates the infor­ma­tion from public…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion vacat­ing the con­vic­tion of Patrick Dwayne Murphy (pic­tured), a Native-American pris­on­er sen­tenced to death in Oklahoma state court for a mur­der he argues could only be pros­e­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. On May 21, 2018, the Court grant­ed Oklahoma’s peti­tion to review an August 2017 deci­sion by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruling…

State-court factfind­ing by judges in Harris County, Texas death-penal­ty cas­es is ​“a sham” that ​“rub­ber­stamps” the views of coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors, accord­ing to a study of the coun­ty’s cap­i­tal post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings pub­lished in the May 2018 issue of the Houston Law Review. In The Problem of Rubber Stamping in State Capital Habeas Proceedings: A Harris County Case Study, researchers from the University of Texas School of Law Capital…

More than twen­ty years after being con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for a mur­der he has long said he did not com­mit, Corey Williams (pic­tured, cen­ter, with his defense team) walked free from prison in Louisiana on May 22, 2018. The deal was bit­ter­sweet for Williams, for despite the evi­dence of inno­cence, he had to agree to plead guilty to less­er charges of manslaugh­ter and obstruc­tion of jus­tice to obtain his…

In March 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had employed an unsci­en­tif­ic and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly harsh stan­dard in reject­ing Bobby James Moore​’s claim that he is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Despite a sub­se­quent con­ces­sion by Harris County pros­e­cu­tors in November 2017 that Moore (pic­tured) qual­i­fies as intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled under all accepted…

Citing exten­sive evi­dence that California death-row pris­on­er Kevin Cooper (pic­tured) may have been framed, New York Times Pulitzer Prize-win­ning colum­nist Nicholas Kristof has urged Governor Jerry Brown to per­mit advanced DNA test­ing of evi­dence that could poten­tial­ly prove Cooper’s inno­cence. In a col­umn elec­tron­i­cal­ly post­ed by the Times on May 17, 2018 and sched­uled to appear in the paper’s May 20 Sunday print edition,…

Texas exe­cut­ed Juan Castillo (pic­tured) on May 16, 2018, after its state courts stayed his exe­cu­tion to address whether his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for a botched rob­bery and mur­der had been a prod­uct of false tes­ti­mo­ny, but then denied him an evi­den­tiary hear­ing nec­es­sary to prove that…

State and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have agreed to with­draw the death penal­ty in exchange for guilty pleas by defen­dants charged with mul­ti­ple killings in two unre­lat­ed high-pro­file mur­der cas­es. On May 4, Lake County, Indiana pros­e­cu­tors dropped the death penal­ty against Darren Vann (pic­tured, left), who had killed sev­en women. On May 1, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors announced they would not pur­sue the death penal­ty against Esteban Santiago…