Publications & Testimony

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…

Two for­mer Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­ers, whose death sen­tences were over­turned by fed­er­al courts after the United States Supreme Court had ruled against them, have been resen­tenced to life without…

According to new­ly dis­closed records, the Harris County assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney who pros­e­cut­ed Texas death-row exoneree Alfred DeWayne Brown was aware of phone records that cor­rob­o­rat­ed Brown’s asser­tion of inno­cence long before the case went to tri­al, but with­held the records from the defense and intim­i­dat­ed a wit­ness who orig­i­nal tes­ti­mo­ny was sup­port­ed by the records into false­ly testifying against…

Alva Campbell (pic­tured), the ter­mi­nal­ly ill death-row pris­on­er who sur­vived a botched exe­cu­tion attempt by the state of Ohio on November 15, 2017, has…

The North Carolina Supreme Court announced on March 2 that it will hear appeals from three of the four pris­on­ers whose death sen­tences were reduced to life with­out parole under the state’s Racial Justice Act, then rein­stat­ed after the leg­is­la­ture repealed the…

Recently released poll results from two Florida coun­ties that have heav­i­ly used the death penal­ty sug­gest that vot­ers actu­al­ly pre­fer life-sentencing options…

In what lawyers for Virginia death-row pris­on­ers have called ​“a land­mark rul­ing,” a fed­er­al judge has issued an injunc­tion bar­ring the Commonwealth from sub­ject­ing pris­on­ers who have been sen­tenced to death to auto­mat­ic soli­tary con­fine­ment, phys­i­cal iso­la­tion from vis­i­tors and oth­er pris­on­ers, and other harsh…