Publications & Testimony

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…

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…