Publications & Testimony

NEWS: JUNE 28 — The New Mexico Supreme Court has overturned the death sentences of the two prisoners who had remained on the state’s death row after the legislature repealed the state’s death-penalty statute in 2009. In 3 – 2 decisions in Fry v. Lopez and Allen v. Lemaster, the court found that the death sentences imposed on Robert Fry and Timothy Allen were disproportionate to “other equally horrendous cases in which defendants were not sentenced to death.” The justices vacated the death sentences…

Finding that a Mississippi prosecutor had intentionally struck black jurors in an attempt to empanel as white a jury as possible, the United States Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of death-row prisoner Curtis Giovanni Flowers. The Court’s 7 – 2 decision on June 21, 2019, found that Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District Attorney Doug Evans had undertaken extraordinary efforts to prevent African Americans from serving as jurors in six trials in which he has prosecuted Flowers for…

In a 7 – 2 decision, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Curtis Giovanni Flowers, a Mississippi death row prisoner who has been tried six times for a notorious 1996 quadruple murder in Winona, Mississippi. Three of the first five trials ended in convictions that were overturned on appeal and two trials resulted in hung juries. The lead prosecutor for all six trials was Doug Evans, the District Attorney in Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District. In the sixth trial, the defense…

A Kentucky capital defendant has moved to dismiss all charges against him or to bar the death penalty in his case as a result of evidence that prosecutors repeatedly eavesdropped on privileged attorney-client telephone calls over the span of a year. Lawyers for James Mallory (pictured) have filed a motion to dismiss the case for gross prosecutorial misconduct, alleging that prosecutors listened to recordings of 120 prison phone calls between Mallory and members of his legal team, totaling more…

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…