Publications & Testimony

Courts in Idaho and Indiana are grap­pling with how to respond to legal chal­lenges to lethal-injec­­tion secre­cy laws after cor­rec­tions offi­cials in both states refused to release exe­cu­tion infor­ma­tion request­ed under state pub­lic records laws. In both states, offi­cials refused to pro­vide details about exe­cu­tion drugs and their sources, say­ing that state law insu­lates the information from…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion vacat­ing the con­vic­tion of Patrick Dwayne Murphy (pic­tured), a Native-American pris­on­er sen­tenced to death in Oklahoma state court for a mur­der he argues could only be pros­e­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. On May 21, 2018, the Court grant­ed Oklahoma’s peti­tion to review an August 2017 deci­sion by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Tenth…

State-court factfind­ing by judges in Harris County, Texas death-penal­­ty cas­es is​“a sham” that​“rub­ber­stamps” the views of coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors, accord­ing to a study of the coun­ty’s cap­i­tal post-con­vic­­tion pro­ceed­ings pub­lished in the May 2018 issue of the Houston Law Review. In The Problem of Rubber Stamping in State Capital Habeas Proceedings: A Harris County Case Study, researchers from the University of Texas School of…

More than twen­ty years after being con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for a mur­der he has long said he did not com­mit, Corey Williams (pic­tured, cen­ter, with his defense team) walked free from prison in Louisiana on May 22, 2018. The deal was bit­ter­sweet for Williams, for despite the evi­dence of inno­cence, he had to agree to plead guilty to less­er charges of manslaugh­ter and obstruc­tion of justice to…

In March 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had employed an unsci­en­tif­ic and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly harsh stan­dard in reject­ing Bobby James Moore​’s claim that he is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Despite a sub­se­quent con­ces­sion by Harris County pros­e­cu­tors in November 2017 that Moore (pic­tured) qualifies as…

Citing exten­sive evi­dence that California death-row pris­on­er Kevin Cooper (pic­tured) may have been framed, New York Times Pulitzer Prize-win­n­ing colum­nist Nicholas Kristof has urged Governor Jerry Brown to per­mit advanced DNA test­ing of evi­dence that could poten­tial­ly prove Cooper’s inno­cence. In a col­umn elec­tron­i­cal­ly post­ed by the Times on May 17, 2018 and sched­uled to appear in the paper’s May 20…

Texas exe­cut­ed Juan Castillo (pic­tured) on May 16, 2018, after its state courts stayed his exe­cu­tion to address whether his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for a botched rob­bery and mur­der had been a prod­uct of false tes­ti­mo­ny, but then denied him an evi­den­tiary hear­ing necessary to…

State and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors have agreed to with­draw the death penal­ty in exchange for guilty pleas by defen­dants charged with mul­ti­ple killings in two unre­lat­ed high-pro­­file mur­der cas­es. On May 4, Lake County, Indiana pros­e­cu­tors dropped the death penal­ty against Darren Vann (pic­tured, left), who had killed sev­en women. On May 1, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors announced they would not pur­sue the death penalty against…

llli­nois Governor Bruce Rauner has con­di­tion­al­ly vetoed a gun-con­trol ini­tia­tive unless the leg­is­la­ture agrees to rein­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. Exercising an amenda­to­ry veto — a pow­er some gov­er­nors are grant­ed that per­mits them to amend leg­is­la­tion in lieu of an out­right veto — Rauner called for mak­ing the killing of a police offi­cer or any mur­der in which more than one per­son was killed a new crime of​“death penal­ty mur­der.” In…

The United States Supreme Court has grant­ed a new tri­al to Louisiana death-row pris­on­er Robert McCoy (pic­tured), whose lawyer admit­ted his guilt despite McCoy’s​“ada­ment” and​“vocif­er­ous” insis­tence that he was inno­cent. Facing what coun­sel believed was over­whelm­ing evi­dence of guilt and hop­ing to per­suade the jury to spare McCoy’s life, defense lawyer Larry English told jurors his client had​“com­mit­ted three murders.……