Publications & Testimony

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has issued a rul­ing reviv­ing a law­suit brought by Alabama death-row pris­on­ers that chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s three-drug exe­cu­tion pro­to­col using the con­tro­ver­sial lethal-injec­tion drug mida­zo­lam. The unan­i­mous deci­sion by the three-judge fed­er­al appeals pan­el on September 1 reversed a fed­er­al dis­trict court rul­ing against sev­er­al death-row pris­on­ers who sued the Alabama…

On the third anniver­sary of their ground­break­ing exon­er­a­tion, a new report by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) reviews in-depth the long path from wrong­ful con­vic­tions and death sen­tences to free­dom trav­eled by for­mer North Carolina death-row pris­on­ers Henry McCollum and Leon…

Almost all of the 26 men sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Ohio over the next three years suf­fer from men­tal, emo­tion­al, or cog­ni­tive impair­ments or lim­i­ta­tions that raise ques­tions as to whether they should have been sen­tenced to death, accord­ing to a new report released August 30 by Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project. While the U.S. Constitution requires that the death penal­ty be reserved for the worst crimes and the worst offend­ers, the report—Prisoners on…

The Florida Supreme Court has upheld Governor Rick Scott​’s (pic­tured, left) removal of Orange and Osceola County State Attorney Aramis Ayala (pic­tured, right) as pros­e­cu­tor in more than two dozen mur­der cas­es because of her offi­cial pol­i­cy not to seek to seek the death penal­ty. Over two dis­sents, the sev­en-mem­ber Court held that Scott had act­ed ​“well with­in the bounds of the Governor’s broad author­i­ty” when he replaced Ayala with Lake County…

Fifty years ago today, Thurgood Marshall (pic­tured) was con­firmed as the nation’s first African-American Supreme Court…

A Texas appeals court has stayed the August 30 exe­cu­tion of Steven Long (pic­tured) to pro­vide him an oppor­tu­ni­ty to lit­i­gate a claim that he is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. On August 21, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued the stay and remand­ed Long’s case to a Dallas County tri­al court, direct­ing the court to recon­sid­er his claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s…

Oklahoma will not exe­cute any­one in 2017 and, with­out an exe­cu­tion pro­to­col in place, can­not seek any exe­cu­tion dates through at least January 2018, mark­ing the longest peri­od of time between exe­cu­tions in the state in the mod­ern era of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. As part of an agree­ment in a fed­er­al law­suit chal­leng­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office may not request exe­cu­tion dates for any pris­on­er for at least five months after the state…

In a 5 – 2 deci­sion that left both pro­po­nents and oppo­nents of the death penal­ty declar­ing vic­to­ry, the Supreme Court of California has upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Proposition 66, a vot­er ini­tia­tive intend­ed to speed up death-penal­ty appeals and exe­cu­tions, but severe­ly lim­it­ed the scope of its core pro­vi­sions. In Briggs v. Brown, the court on August 24 sus­tained por­tions of the mea­sure that shift­ed which court will hear cap­i­tal cas­es, increased…

As Florida pre­pared to exe­cute Mark Asay (pic­tured) on August 24, the state’s death-penal­ty prac­tices came under fire from human rights groups, crim­i­nal jus­tice reform­ers, and one of the world’s largest phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies. Asay was exe­cut­ed despite the Florida Supreme Court’s recog­ni­tion that his death sen­tence — imposed by a judge after three jurors had vot­ed for life — was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly imposed and that the court mis­tak­en­ly believed both of Asay’s…

In a case that led to a land­mark U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion on judi­cial bias, a divid­ed Pennsylvania Supreme Court on August 22 upheld a low­er court’s order over­turn­ing the death penal­ty imposed on Terrance Williams (pic­tured) for the mur­der of a Philadelphia church dea­con. The court split 2 – 2 on the out­come of a new appeal that had been ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court after for­mer Philadelphia District Attorney Ronald Castille — who had…