Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

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

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…

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

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…

With 24 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly con­demned to die, Hamilton County—home to Cincinnati—has the largest death row of any coun­ty in Ohio, despite a small­er pop­u­la­tion and a low­er mur­der rate than oth­er parts of the state. Ten of the 55 pris­on­ers exe­cut­ed in the state since the 1970s were sen­tenced to death in Hamilton County, again more than any…

On January 12, 2016, in an 8 – 1 deci­sion, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opin­ion in Hurst v. Florida, in which the Court struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al Florida’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing statute. At the time of the opin­ion, Florida death-penal­­ty law required a jury to make a sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion – on which only a bare major­i­ty of jurors had to agree – to the judge, who would then lat­er​“hold a separate…

Prosecutors in Mohave County, Arizona announced in February that they will drop the pur­suit of the death penal­ty in two mur­der cas­es in the coun­ty. Justin Rector and Darrell Ketchner were sep­a­rate­ly charged with first-degree mur­der, and offi­cials said their defense teams had already spent over $2.2 mil­lion prepar­ing for tri­als that are still far from tak­ing place. Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith said,​“Everybody’s look­ing to save mon­ey and these death…