Publications & Testimony

Multiple fac­tors — from declin­ing mur­der rates to the aban­don­ment of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment by many rur­al coun­ties and sub­stan­tial­ly reduced usage in out­lier coun­ties that had aggres­sive­ly imposed it in the past — have col­lec­tive­ly led to an ​“aston­ish­ing plunge” in death sen­tences over the last twen­ty years, accord­ing to a new study, Lethal Rejection, pub­lished in the 2017/​2018 Albany Law Review. Using data on death-eli­gi­ble cas­es from 1994, 2004, and 2014, Drake University law…

One month after Alabama called off its two-and-a-half hour attempt­ed exe­cu­tion of Doyle Hamm, the state reached a con­fi­den­tial set­tle­ment agree­ment in which it agreed not to seek anoth­er exe­cu­tion date and Hamm’s attor­ney dis­missed his client’s pend­ing civil-rights…

In his new book Surviving Execution: A Miscarriage of Justice and the Fight to End the Death Penalty, Sky News reporter Ian Woods tells the sto­ry of his rela­tion­ship with con­demned Oklahoma pris­on­er Richard Glossip, whose case gained promi­nence after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review his chal­lenge to the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­ce­dures. Although Glossip’s case is most fre­quent­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the Supreme…

The Tennessee Supreme Court has denied a request from the state’s attor­ney gen­er­al to sched­ule eight exe­cu­tions before the June 1, 2018 expi­ra­tion date of Tennessee’s sup­ply of one of its exe­cu­tion drugs. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery had filed the request on February 14, say­ing that sched­ul­ing exe­cu­tions ​“after June 1, 2018 is uncer­tain due to the ongo­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in obtain­ing the nec­es­sary lethal injec­tion chem­i­cals.” The court’s March 15,…

Ohio Governor John Kasich has com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of 52-year-old William Montgomery (pic­tured) to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Montgomery was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on April 11. The one-page procla­ma­tion grant­i­ng clemen­cy (pic­tured right, click to enlarge) did not spec­i­fy the grounds for Kasich’s action and was not accom­pa­nied by a news release or state­ment to the media. The order, issued March 26, stat­ed sim­ply, ​“after…

Americans of all ages, races, and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions over­whelm­ing­ly oppose the Trump admin­is­tra­tion plan to pur­sue cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for drug over­dose deaths and believe it will have no effect on address­ing the opi­oid pub­lic health cri­sis, accord­ing to a March 16 – 21, 2018 nation­wide Quinnipiac University…

New court fil­ings argue that Columbus, Georgia pros­e­cu­tors had a pat­tern and prac­tice of sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly strik­ing black prospec­tive jurors because of their race, dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly empan­elling all- or near­ly-all-white juries to try black defen­dants on tri­al for their lives in cap­i­tal murder…

New court fil­ings argue that Columbus, Georgia pros­e­cu­tors had a pat­tern and prac­tice of sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly strik­ing black prospec­tive jurors because of their race, dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly empan­elling all- or near­ly-all-white juries to try black defen­dants on tri­al for their lives in cap­i­tal murder…

In a deci­sion that clar­i­fies the show­ing indi­gent pris­on­ers must make to obtain inves­tiga­tive ser­vices, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a Texas death-row pris­on­er who was denied fund­ing to chal­lenge the death sen­tence imposed in his case. In Ayestas v. Davis, the Court unan­i­mous­ly ruled that the Texas fed­er­al courts had applied an over­ly restric­tive legal stan­dard in deny­ing Carlos Ayestas (pic­tured) fund­ing to…