Publications & Testimony

A new study of the use of capital punishment in Los Angeles has concluded that, throughout the administration of District Attorney Jackie Lacey (pictured) the death penalty has “discriminate[d] on the basis of race and against the poor.” The study, released June 18, 2019 by the ACLU, reported that under Lacey’s administration the Los Angeles death penalty has been imposed exclusively against defendants of color, disproportionately for killings of white victims, and disproportionately in cases…

Arguing that Marion Wilson (pictured, center) did not kill anyone and did not intend that a killing occur, lawyers for the Georgia death-row prisoner have filed a clemency petition urging the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute Wilson’s sentence to life without parole. The Board, which declassified Wilson’s petition allowing it to be released to the public, is scheduled to hold a clemency hearing on Wednesday, June 19, 2019, one day before Wilson is scheduled to be executed.

Citing “egregious” misconduct by state prison officials in trying to evade a court order to produce public records concerning its efforts to obtain lethal-injection drugs, an Indiana judge has directed the state’s Department of Correction to pay more than a half million dollars in plaintiffs’ attorney fees. On June 12, 2019, Marion County Circuit Judge Sheryl Lynch (pictured) awarded $538,000 in attorney fees to plaintiffs who were seeking public release of records regarding the drugs Indiana…

NEWS (6/20): Georgia’s execution of Marion Wilson was the 1,500^th execution in the United States and the 74^th in Georgia since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of new death-penalty laws in 1976. It was the 10^th execution in the U.S. in 2019 and the second in Georgia. 82% of all executions in the United States since the 1970s — and every execution so far in 2019 — have been in the South. See Executions. NEWS (6/20): The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit has reversed a…

The Death Penalty Information Center has modernized and expanded its award-winning website. On June 14, 2019, DPIC launched its redesigned website, culminating a two-year project that involved the transfer and reorganization of information on the Center’s more than 7,000 webpages. Among the most notable additions of the new website are 20 interactive Tableau graphics, including States With and Without the Death Penalty, Prisoners on Death Row, and a number of graphics on executions…

A North Carolina death-row prisoner is seeking a new trial based on allegations that prosecutors in his case used a training document steeped in racist stereotypes to manufacture pretextual reasons to exclude African Americans from serving on his jury. In a June 4, 2019 court filing in the appeal of Russell William Tucker (pictured), two national experts say that the Forsyth County prosecutors unconstitutionally exercised their discretionary juror challenges on the basis of race to strike all…

The Ohio House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a bill that would ban the death penalty for offenders who were seriously mentally ill at the time of the offense. House Bill 136, sponsored by Rep. Brett Hillyer (R – Uhrichsville, pictured), passed the House by a vote of 76 – 18 on June 5, 2019 with bipartisan support and was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 11. Hillyer’s bill would remove the death penalty as a sentencing option for defendants who can show they had…

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted review of an Arizona death-penalty case in which the state courts first refused to consider a defendant’s mitigating evidence and then denied his request for a jury sentencing hearing after his death sentence was overturned. The Court on June 10, 2019 granted the petition for writ of certiorari filed by Arizona death-row prisoner James Erin McKinney (pictured) 26 years after he was first sentenced to death. In 1993, McKinney was convicted for two murders…

A special prosecutor in Harris County, Texas, has filed a complaint with the Texas State Bar Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel against former Assistant District Attorney Daniel Rizzo, alleging that Rizzo intentionally concealed exculpatory evidence crucial to the exoneration of former death-row prisoner Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured). Brown was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for a robbery murder in which a store clerk and responding police officer were shot to death.

NEWS (6/16): On this date 75 years ago, South Carolina executed George Stinney, an innocent 14-year-old black boy framed for the murders of two young white girls. The Stinney family was forced to flee their home in Alcolu because of the threat of violence. Stinney was tried before an all-white jury in a trial that took less than half a day. He was the only black person in the courthouse. The jury took just ten minutes to convict him and sentence him to death. His lawyer did not file an appeal…