Publications & Testimony

In a racial­ly charged case rais­ing ques­tions of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al over­charg­ing, inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and ques­tion­able jury prac­tices, Kharon Davis (pic­tured), an African-American man charged with cap­i­tal mur­der in Dothan, Alabama, has been impris­oned for 10 years with­out tri­al. Davis — who has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence and whose pri­or offense was dri­ving with­out a license — was 22 years old when he and two oth­ers were arrest­ed for…

The failed cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion of Scott Dekraai for the worst mass mur­der in Orange County, California his­to­ry has cost tax­pay­ers more than $2.5 mil­lion — more than dou­ble the aver­age cost of a California death-penal­ty case — and the pric­etag for con­tin­u­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into offi­cial mis­con­duct by the coun­ty dis­trict attor­ney’s and sher­if­f’s offices con­tin­ues to rise. Unlike most cap­i­tal cas­es, the costs were not pri­mar­i­ly for the tri­al itself, but the product…

Two pro­fes­sors of soci­ol­o­gy and crim­i­nol­o­gy who reviewed more than 1500 cas­es in which con­vict­ed pris­on­ers were lat­er exon­er­at­ed have found a direct rela­tion­ship between the seri­ous­ness of the crime and mis­car­riages of jus­tice: ​“the ​‘worst of the worst crimes,’” they say, ​“pro­duce the ​‘worst of the worst evi­dence.’ ” In their research — report­ed in the law review arti­cle, The Worst of the Worst: Heinous Crimes and Erroneous Evidence—University of Denver pro­fes­sors Scott…

Texas pros­e­cu­tors have dropped their pur­suit of the death penal­ty against a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill cap­i­tal defen­dant charged with what they char­ac­ter­ized as the ​“ambush mur­der” of a Harris County sheriff’s deputy. Special pros­e­cu­tor Brett Ligon (pic­tured, left) — the Montgomery County District Attorney who was han­dling the pros­e­cu­tion because Houston pros­e­cu­tors had a con­flict that pre­vent­ed them from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the case — announced on September 13 that he had agreed to a plea deal in which…

A coali­tion of 23 human rights groups, includ­ing Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve, has urged the United States gov­ern­ment to issue sanc­tions against for­eign gov­ern­ment offi­cials who they say have used the death penal­ty to repress polit­i­cal dis­sent by tor­tur­ing peace­ful pro­test­ers into con­fess­ing to cap­i­tal offens­es they did not…

Ohio exe­cut­ed Gary Otte on September 13 after both the United States Supreme Court and the Ohio Supreme Court declined to review his chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of apply­ing the death penal­ty against peo­ple who were younger than age 21 at the time of the…

A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of U.S. mur­der data from 1987 through 2015 has found no evi­dence that the death penal­ty deters mur­der or pro­tects police. Instead, the evi­dence shows that mur­der rates, includ­ing mur­ders of police offi­cers, are con­sis­tent­ly high­er in death-penal­ty states than in states that have abol­ished the death penal­ty. And far from expe­ri­enc­ing increas­es in mur­der rates or open sea­son on law enforce­ment, the data show that states that have abol­ished the death…

Sixteen years lat­er, the alleged per­pe­tra­tors of the September 11, 2001 hijack­ings and attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and the down­ing of Flight 93, have yet to be tried, and issues relat­ing to the use of evi­dence obtained by tor­ture, the appro­pri­ate­ness and legal­i­ty of tri­als by mil­i­tary com­mis­sion, and where and how they should be tried raise ques­tions as to whether and when a tri­al may take place. The five men charged in the attack — alleged mas­ter­mind Khalid Sheikh…

Death rows are shrink­ing nation­wide, and the expe­ri­ence in states like Virginia and Pennsylvania helps explain why. Virginia’s death row has fall­en from a report­ed high of 58 in 1995 to four in September 2017, the low­est it has been since 1979. Pennsylvania’s death row of 160 pris­on­ers is its small­est in near­ly 25 years — down from 175 last December and from a report­ed 247 in April…

For the sec­ond time in as many years, Georgia is prepar­ing to exe­cute an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled African-American man, despite evi­dence that the death ver­dict in his case may have been taint­ed by a white juror’s pro­found racial…