Publications & Testimony

A joint com­mit­tee of the Kentucky leg­is­la­ture con­duct­ed a hear­ing on July 6, 2018 on the Commonwealth’s rarely used death penal­ty, includ­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion by sup­port­ers and oppo­nents of a bill to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary took tes­ti­mo­ny from pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, cor­rec­tion­al offi­cials, and leg­is­la­tors on issues rang­ing from costs and arbi­trari­ness to the length of…

Justice Anthony Kennedy​’s votes swung both to the right and to the left on death-penal­­ty issues, pro­fes­sors Carol Steiker (pic­tured, l.) of Harvard Law School and her broth­er, Jordan Steiker (pic­tured, r.) of the University of Texas School of Law write in a com­men­tary for SCOTUSblog,​“but [he] declined to swing for the fences.” The Steikers, who co-authored the acclaimed book, Courting Death: The Supreme Court and…

A Colorado Springs jury reject­ed a death sen­tence for Glen Law Galloway (pic­tured), mark­ing the third high-pro­­file case since 2015 in which Colorado jurors have select­ed a life sen­tence over death. The ver­dict brought to an end El Paso County​’s first cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion in more than a decade, after a six-week tri­al in a court­room with a $50,000 makeover that includ­ed new audio and video tech­nol­o­gy and a remod­eled jury box…

Eight days before the sched­uled July 11, 2018 exe­cu­tion of Scott Dozier, the Nevada Department of Corrections issued a new lethal-injec­­tion pro­to­col, switch­ing the drugs the state intends to use in car­ry­ing out his exe­cu­tion. On July 3, the Department announced that it plans to use an untest­ed three-drug pro­to­col of the seda­tive mida­zo­lam, the opi­oid fen­tanyl, and the par­a­lyt­ic cisatracuri­um. The last-minute change prompted an…

Lindy Isonhood (click to enlarge pic­ture) served on the Mississippi jury that sen­tenced Bobby Wilcher to death in 1994. In a com­men­tary pub­lished on Medium, she writes that the deci­sion to con­demn Wilcher​“continue[s] to haunt me today.” Isonhood — whose expe­ri­ence as a death-penal­­ty juror is the sub­ject of a new doc­u­men­tary film, Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2—explains how lit­tle she and her fel­low jurors knew…

As its 2017 – 2018 term came to a close, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review two Mississippi cas­es that pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as imple­ment­ed in that state and across the coun­try. Over the dis­sent of Justice Stephen Breyer (pic­tured), who renewed his call for the Court to review the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty as a whole, the Court on June 29 denied cer­tio­rari in the cases of…

Two men charged with killing Philadelphia Police Sgt. Robert Wilson III have been sen­tenced to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, plus an addi­tion­al term of 50 to 100 years, as pros­e­cu­tors in one of the nation’s largest death-penal­­ty coun­ties agreed not to seek the death penal­ty in exchange for the defen­dants’ guilty pleas. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (pic­tured) appeared in court on June 25…

Justice Anthony Kennedy (pic­tured) announced on June 27, 2018, that he will retire from the U.S. Supreme Court. During Kennedy’s thir­ty years on the Court, he became known as a swing vote, sid­ing with both the con­ser­v­a­tive and lib­er­al wings of the Court. His role as the Court’s swing vote extend­ed to some cru­cial death-penal­­ty cas­es, includ­ing Roper v. Simmons (2005), in which the jus­tices struck down the death penal­ty for juvenile…

Tennessee could save an esti­mat­ed $1.4 – 1.89 mil­lion per year by adopt­ing a ban on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for defen­dants with severe men­tal ill­ness, accord­ing to a new report by the American Bar Association Death Penalty Due Process Review Project. The report said a severe men­tal ill­ness death-penal­­ty exclu­sion​“could result in cost sav­ings [because] a sub­set of indi­vid­u­als who cur­rent­ly could face expen­sive cap­i­tal prosecutions and…

Pennsylvania​’s death-penal­­ty sys­tem is seri­ous­ly flawed and in need of major reform, accord­ing to a report released June 25, 2018, by the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment. The bipar­ti­san task force and advi­so­ry com­mit­tee — which con­sist­ed of leg­is­la­tors, pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, police chiefs, judges, and vic­tims’ advo­cates — began work in 2012 and exam­ined 17 issues relat­ed to the Commonwealth’s death…