Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a sweep­ing chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment brought by Arizona death-row pris­on­er Abel Hidalgo (pic­tured). After sched­ul­ing con­sid­er­a­tion of Hidalgo v. Arizona for ten sep­a­rate court con­fer­ences, the Court on March 19 unan­i­mous­ly denied Hidalgo’s peti­tion for writ of cer­tio­rari. In a state­ment issued in con­junc­tion with the Court’s rul­ing, however,…

Saying ​“the ulti­mate penal­ty has to be the death penal­ty,” President Donald Trump (pic­tured) announced on March 19 that he will direct the Department of Justice to seek the death penal­ty against drug traf­fick­ers. The pro­pos­al, includ­ed as part of the administration’s plan to address an opi­oid epi­dem­ic that has result­ed in as many as 64,000 over­dose deaths in 2016 alone, drew imme­di­ate crit­i­cism from pub­lic-health and crim­i­nal-jus­tice experts. ​“We can’t exe­cute our way out of…

Faced with doubts about pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and the accu­ra­cy of foren­sic evi­dence, the Ohio Parole Board has rec­om­mend­ed that Governor John Kasich grant exec­u­tive clemen­cy to William T. Montgomery (pic­tured), sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on April…

Human rights advo­cates are warn­ing that the impend­ing exe­cu­tion of Russell Bucklew (pic­tured) in Missouri on March 20 presents a ​“sub­stan­tial­ly increase[d] risk of a grue­some and botched…

At a news con­fer­ence on March 14, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh announced that the state plans to switch its method of exe­cu­tion from lethal injec­tion to nitro­gen gas…

The California Supreme Court has vacat­ed the con­vic­tion of Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pic­tured), say­ing that the foren­sic evi­dence that sent the for­mer Mexican farm­work­er to death row 25 years ago was ​“exten­sive,” ​“per­va­sive,” ​“impact­ful,” and…

The California Supreme Court has vacat­ed the con­vic­tion of Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pic­tured), say­ing that the foren­sic evi­dence that sent the for­mer Mexican farm­work­er to death row 25 years ago was ​“exten­sive,” ​“per­va­sive,” ​“impact­ful,” and ​“false.” Benavides, now 68, was sen­tenced to death in 1993 after being found guilty of bru­tal­ly mur­der­ing Consuelo Verdugo, his girlfriend’s 21-month-old tod­dler, by rap­ing and anal­ly sodom­iz­ing her. However, the court…

Carlton Gary, a Georgia death-row pris­on­er sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on March 15, is ask­ing the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant him clemen­cy on the basis of new and with­held evi­dence that under­cuts the pros­e­cu­tion tes­ti­mo­ny against him and sug­gests he did not com­mit the crimes for which he was sen­tenced to death. Gary was con­vict­ed of rap­ing and killing three women in the 1970s, in what pros­e­cu­tors have claimed was part of a string of nine…

“In 2016, at least 60 pris­on­ers were exon­er­at­ed after hav­ing been con­demned to death, in coun­tries across the geo­graph­i­cal and polit­i­cal spec­trum,” accord­ing to a new report on wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions by the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. The report, Justice Denied: A Global Study of Wrongful Death Row Convictions, ana­lyzes risk fac­tors for exe­cut­ing the inno­cent that are endem­ic in death penal­ty cas­es irre­spec­tive of where they are tried, and…

In Washington and Utah, bipar­ti­san or Republican-led efforts at death-penal­ty repeal fell short, a month after death-penal­ty pro­po­nents aban­doned efforts to rein­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in New Mexico and Iowa. In Washington, a bipar­ti­san push to replace the death penal­ty with life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of release was intro­duced at the request of Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson with the sup­port of his…