Publications & Testimony

County Commissioners in Pennington County, South Dakota have approved bud­get increas­es of a half-mil­lion dol­lars each for the coun­ty’s courts and its pub­lic defend­er office for 2018, large­ly as a result of two high-pro­file death-penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions. Taxpayers will shoul­der most of the finan­cial bur­den result­ing from the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions of Rapid City defen­dants Jonathon Klinetobe and Richard Hirth, charged with murder,…

Signaling a strength­en­ing of the Catholic Church’s offi­cial oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Pope Francis (pic­tured) marked the 25^th anniver­sary of the Catholic Church’s pro­mul­ga­tion of amend­ments to its Catechism by declar­ing the death penal­ty ​“con­trary to the Gospel” and ​“an inhu­mane mea­sure that, regard­less of how it is car­ried out, abas­es human dig­ni­ty.” During Vatican cer­e­monies on October 11 com­mem­o­rat­ing the 1992 amend­ments, Pope Francis said that the death penal­ty is…

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied review of a peti­tion filed by lawyers on behalf of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri—accused of orches­trat­ing al-Qaida’s October 12, 2000 sui­cide bomb­ing of the USS Cole war­ship off the coast of Yemen—chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of his death penal­ty tri­al before a Guantánamo Bay mil­i­tary com­mis­sion. But in what has been described as ​“a stun­ning set­back” to what would have been the first death-penal­ty tri­al held before the…

An Arkansas tri­al judge has dis­missed all charges against for­mer death-row pris­on­er, Rickey Dale Newman (pic­tured), set­ting him free on October 11 after hav­ing spent near­ly 17 years in cus­tody fol­low­ing the February 2001 mur­der of a tran­sient woman in a ​“hobo park” on the out­skirts of Van Buren, Arkansas. Newman became the 160^th per­son since 1973 to be exon­er­at­ed after hav­ing hav­ing been wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. Newman, a for­mer Marine with…

A St. Charles County tri­al judge has sen­tenced a Missouri man to death two months after 11 of the 12 jurors in his case had vot­ed to spare his…

In sep­a­rate state­ments issued in con­nec­tion with the 15^th World and European Day against the Death Penalty on October 10, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and European Union U.S. Ambassador David O’Sullivan have called upon all nations to halt sched­uled exe­cu­tions and abol­ish the death penal­ty. In his first ever state­ment on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment since becom­ing Secretary-General on January 1, 2017, Guterres described cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a…

Though no phys­i­cal evi­dence links him to the crime, Texas is set to exe­cute Robert Pruett (pic­tured) on October 12 for the 1999 stab­bing death of a state cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer who was at the cen­ter of a prison cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion. Results of a DNA test of the mur­der weapon in 2015 found DNA that matched nei­ther Pruett nor the vic­tim, Officer Daniel…

Two cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tors have elect­ed to pur­sue the death penal­ty against aging or infirm defen­dants who will almost cer­tain­ly nev­er be exe­cut­ed have raised ques­tions about the costs and ben­e­fits of cap­i­tal charges and the arbi­trary exer­cise of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion. Federal pros­e­cu­tors in Missouri are seek­ing the death penal­ty against 61-year-old Ulysses Jones Jr., a man with ter­mi­nal renal dis­ease, for the 2006 killing of anoth­er pris­on­er at a fed­er­al prison…

The United States has vot­ed against an his­toric res­o­lu­tion passed by the United Nations Human Rights Council con­demn­ing the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of and use of the death penal­ty for apos­ta­sy, blas­phe­my, adul­tery, and con­sen­su­al same-sex rela­tions and call­ing on nations in which the death penal­ty is legal to ensure that it is not imposed ​“arbi­trar­i­ly or in a dis­crim­i­na­to­ry man­ner.” The res­o­lu­tion also called for an end to the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry use of the death penalty…

Death-row exoneree John Thompson (pic­tured), described by Innocence Project New Orleans direc­tor Emily Maw, as ​“an amaz­ing force in the world” and a ​“nation­al leg­end,” died October 3 at a New Orleans-area hos­pi­tal after suf­fer­ing a heart…