Publications & Testimony

An Indiana federal district court judge has vacated the death sentence imposed on federal death-row prisoner Bruce Webster, finding that Webster is ineligible for the death penalty because he is intellectually disabled. After a five-day hearing in April 2019, in which the court heard live testimony from seven mental health experts and considered deposition testimony from three others, Senior Judge William T. Lawrence of the Southern District of Indiana ruled on June 18, 2019 that new evidence…

“Being the survivor of a homicide victim has a pain for which there aren’t any words,” says New Hampshire Representative Renny Cushing (pictured), in the latest episode of the Death Penalty Information Center podcast, Discussions with DPIC. But “[f]illing another coffin doesn’t do anything to bring our loved ones back, it just widens the circle of pain. There’s a big difference between justice and vengeance,” he says. In an interview with DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham, Cushing…

The New Mexico Supreme Court has cleared the state’s death row, vacating the death sentences imposed on the state’s final two death-row prisoners, and directing that they be resentenced to life in prison. The rulings, issued by a divided court on June 28, 2019 in the cases of Timothy Allen (pictured, left) and Robert Fry (pictured, right), came almost ten years to the day after New Mexico’s death-penalty abolition, signed into law by Governor Bill Richardson, took effect. However, the 2009…

At the midpoint of 2019, death sentences and executions remain near historic lows in the United States, with executions and pending execution dates concentrated heavily in a few southern states. The year’s executions and new death sentences have disproportionally involved defendants or prisoners with mental illness, brain damage, and/or severe childhood trauma, and those with inadequate representation. New Hampshire became the 21^st state to abolish the death penalty, and California’s governor…

NEWS: July 6 — Pennsylvania has joined the list of states that have not carried out an execution in more than 20 years. Five death-penalty states (Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming) and the U.S. military now have not conducted an execution in at least two decades. More than half of the states in the U.S. (26), as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. military either do not have the death penalty or have not executed anyone in at least 20 years. See States…

In the midst of National Pride Month commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and the birth of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, South Dakota has issued a death warrant seeking to execute a gay man whose death sentence was tainted by anti-gay bias. Charles Rhines (pictured) was sentenced to death by a jury that, according to juror affidavits, was influenced by bigoted stereotypes in reaching its decision. On June 25, 2019, in response to a motion filed by state prosecutors…

The Texas State Comptroller has denied compensation to death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured), despite a formal court declaration that he is “actually innocent” of the murders of a store clerk and a Houston police officer that sent him to death row in 2005. Claiming uncertainty as to whether a Harris County judge had jurisdiction to declare Brown innocent of the murders, comptroller Glenn Hegar on June 26, 2019 denied Brown’s application for compensation for the 12 years he had been…

In July 1976, false forensic testimony and an eyewitness identification manipulated by police misconduct sent Charles Ray Finch to North Carolina’s death row. Forty-three years later, he has become the 166^th person in the United States since 1973 to be exonerated after having been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death. On June 14, 2019, after a federal appeals court said Finch had proven his “actual innocence” and a federal district court had given the state 30 days to decide whether to…

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the unsealing of court documents related to Alabama’s May 30, 2019 execution of Christopher Price. On June 24, the Court granted a motion filed by National Public Radio (NPR) and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), to unseal all Supreme Court pleadings in the case of Price v. Dunn, in which — based on redacted filings — the Court permitted Price’s execution to proceed. The Court did not issue an opinion in connection with the order. Price had…

When Georgia executed Marion Wilson, Jr., on June 20, 2019, it marked the 1500^th execution in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all death-penalty statutes in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, then four years later permitted executions to go forward under new statutes ostensibly enacted to address the unconstitutional arbitrariness that had plagued the old laws. His execution, analysts say, reflects a number of trends in the modern death penalty and provided a moment in time to…