Publications & Testimony

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…

A study of tax rates and crime rates in Texas counties has found that death-penalty trials contribute to higher property tax rates and increased rates of property crime. Alex Lundberg (pictured), an assistant professor of Economics at West Virginia University, analyzed budgetary and crime rate data from Texas counties and found that counties responded to the high cost burden of capital trials by raising property taxes and reducing public safety expenditures. As an example, he cites Jasper…

One year after a state task force issued a report calling Pennsylvania’s death penalty seriously flawed and in need of major reform, bipartisan opposition to capital punishment is surfacing in the Commonwealth’s legislature. A group of legislators, led by Lebanon County Republican State Rep. Frank Ryan (pictured, left) and Philadelphia Democrat Chris Rabb (pictured, right), have prepared legislation to repeal Pennsylvania’s death penalty and are circulating the proposal for co-sponsorship. “The…

Four years after the racially motivated murders of nine African-American parishioners at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015, a new book by Charleston Post and Courier reporter Jennifer Berry Hawes explores the aftermath of the killings and the extraordinary narrative of grace and forgiveness it produced. As a reporter for the Post and Courier, Hawes covered the story of white supremacist Dylann Roof’s murder of the churchgoers…

An Alabama woman who may have been raped by guards has given birth after being impregnated in the Coosa County jail while awaiting trial on capital murder charges. LaToni Daniel (pictured), an honorably discharged Army National Guard veteran who has been in pretrial custody without bail for more than seventeen months, had been prescribed sedatives in the prison for a supposed seizure disorder, and the medication prolonged her sleep. She first learned she was pregnant in December 2018 after…

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a landmark report titled Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, in which it raised significant questions about the validity of every forensic science discipline except DNA analysis. The report concluded, “no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source.” In a…

Aramis Ayala (pictured), the first African American elected as a state attorney in Florida, will not seek re-election as Orange-Osceola County State Attorney. Citing conflicts with the Florida Supreme Court’s pronouncements on capital prosecutions, Ayala announced in a Facebook video on May 28, 2019 that she would not pursue a second term as state attorney. “It’s time for me to move forward and to continue the pursuit of justice in a different capacity,” she said. Ayala gained renown — and in…

Overriding a veto by Governor Chris Sununu, the New Hampshire legislature has repealed the state’s death-penalty statute. With a 16 – 8 supermajority, the May 30, 2019 vote of the New Hampshire Senate equaled the two-thirds required to override a gubernatorial veto. One week earlier, the state House had voted to override with a 247 – 123 supermajority. The override vote made New Hampshire the 21^st state to abolish capital punishment and the ninth to do so in the last 15 years. Half of all U.S.

Harold Wilson, exonerated in 2005 sixteen years after his wrongful conviction and death sentence for a triple murder in a Philadelphia crack house, has died. He had recently suffered a series of strokes that were further complicated by pneumonia. His risk of stroke and the complications that followed had been worsened by the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder he developed as a result of the 17 years he faced the death penalty, most spent in solitary confinement on death row. He died on May 18, 2019.