Publications & Testimony

On April 26, 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) opened the Memorial for Peace and Justice and its accom­pa­ny­ing Legacy Museum, which tell the sto­ries of the more than 4,000 men, women, and chil­dren killed by racial ter­ror lynch­ings in the cen­tu­ry fol­low­ing the Civil War, and trace the con­nec­tions between slav­ery, seg­re­ga­tion, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and mass incar­cer­a­tion. The open­ing drew thou­sands of vis­i­tors from across the coun­try, the­atri­cal head­lin­ers, and a host of civ­il rights…

In Pennsylvania, death-row pris­on­ers whose con­vic­tions or death sen­tences are over­turned in state or fed­er­al post-con­vic­tion appeals are almost nev­er resen­tenced to death, a new Death Penalty Information Center study has revealed. Since Pennsylvania adopt­ed its cur­rent death-penal­ty statute in September 1978, post-con­vic­tion courts have reversed pris­on­ers’ cap­i­tal con­vic­tions or death sen­tences in 170 cas­es. Defendants have faced cap­i­tal retri­als or resen­tenc­ings in 137 of those cas­es, and…

Three pow­er­ful new doc­u­men­taries that explore the mod­ern death penal­ty in the United States are set to pre­miere this…

In a deci­sion most sig­nif­i­cant for what it declined to do, the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed efforts by state pros­e­cu­tors to fur­ther lim­it the scope of fed­er­al habeas cor­pus review of state crim­i­nal cas­es. In a 6 – 3 vote with Justice Breyer writ­ing for the major­i­ty, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Georgia death-row pris­on­er Marion Wilson (pic­tured), say­ing that he was enti­tled to fed­er­al-court review of the rea­sons why the Georgia state courts had…

At the urg­ing of the victim’s fam­i­ly, Rapid City, South Dakota pros­e­cu­tors have with­drawn their request for the death penal­ty against two mur­der defen­dants in the only cap­i­tal tri­als pend­ing in the state. On April 16, Pennington County State’s Attorney Mark Vargo with­drew the state’s notice of intent to seek the death penal­ty against Jonathon Klinetobein—charged with arrang­ing the May 2015 mur­der-for-hire of…

Death row is aging and increas­ing­ly infirm and, as a series of recent death war­rants sug­gest, that phe­nom­e­non is rais­ing legal, prac­ti­cal, and humanitarian…

In 1764, Italian philoso­pher Cesare Beccaria wrote the trea­tise, Dei delit­ti e delle pene, which author John Bessler (pic­tured) says spawned glob­al move­ments for fair and pro­por­tion­al pun­ish­ment and against prac­tices such as tor­ture and the death penal­ty. Beccaria’s book was a best-sell­er that swept across Europe and, trans­lat­ed into English in 1767 as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, into the American colonies, shap­ing the beliefs of…

Mexican nation­al Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pic­tured), wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Kern County, California for sup­pos­ed­ly rap­ing, sodom­iz­ing, and mur­der­ing his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daugh­ter, will soon be freed after near­ly 26 years on death row. He will be the 162^nd per­son and fifth for­eign nation­al exon­er­at­ed from a U.S. death row since…

As the sis­ter of a mur­der vic­tim and the wife of a death-row exoneree, LaShawn Ajamu has a unique per­spec­tive on what vic­tims’ fam­i­lies need and how they are treat­ed as crim­i­nal cas­es wend their way through the legal process. And the co-chair of the Murder Victims Families Support Project at Ohioans to Stop Executions strong­ly believes that the death penal­ty fails vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers. Ajamu, the wife of 150^th U.S. death-row exoneree Kwame Ajamu, spoke in…

Forty-four for­mer state and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors and Department of Justice offi­cials — includ­ing for­mer U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey — have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a new tri­al to Corey Williams (pic­tured), say­ing that Caddo Parish, Louisiana pros­e­cu­tors vio­lat­ed their duty to ensure that ​“jus­tice shall be done” by with­hold­ing excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in a murder…