Publications & Testimony

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…

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…