Publications & Testimony

Florida has executed Bobby Joe Long (pictured), a mentally ill Vietnam veteran with service-related traumatic brain injuries, after the U.S. Supreme Court on May 23, 2019 declined to review his case. Long had asked the Court to halt his execution to address “[w]hether an individual who suffers from severe mental illness is exempt from execution under the Eighth Amendment. In 1980, Long received a diagnosis of “Traumatic Brain Disease” from the Veterans Administration as a result of injuries…

Two foreign nationals who were sentenced to death in unrelated cases will receive new trials after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of lower court rulings overturning their convictions. Jose Echavarria (pictured, left), a Nevada prisoner originally from Cuba, and Ahmad Issa (pictured, right), an Ohio prisoner originally from Jordan, each were awarded new trials by federal appellate court decisions in 2018. The states petitioned the Supreme Court seeking review of the cases, but…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a case in which the Texas courts decided a death-row prisoner’s appeal by adopting the prosecution’s fact findings and legal arguments word-for-word without providing the defendant’s lawyer any opportunity to respond. In a May 20, 2019 ruling, the Court without comment denied the petition for writ of certiorari filed by Ray Freeney (pictured), thereby permitting the Harris County prisoner’s conviction and death sentence to stand. The decision was…

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has drawn criticism for denying clemency and presiding over the execution of Michael Samra (pictured) on May 16, 2019, one day after issuing a statement calling Alabama a pro-life state and declaring life “precious” and “sacred.” On May 15, Ivey signed into law a bill that criminalizes abortion, saying that the new law “stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.” After…

In the latest episode of the Discussions with DPIC podcast, Emmy- and Oscar-winner Edward Zwick speaks about his new movie, Trial By Fire. The film, which Zwick co-produced and directed, tells the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1992 for the deaths of his three children in a house fire that prosecutors wrongly claimed had been intentionally set. As Willingham’s execution approached in 2004, evidence came to light that arson investigators had relied…

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued an advisory memorandum declaring that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “lacks jurisdiction” to regulate execution drugs, including enforcing federal laws that prohibit the import of such drugs from abroad. The memorandum, authored by Assistant Attorney General Steven A. Engel (pictured) for the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, places the administration squarely in conflict with a 2012 federal district court order requiring the FDA to…

In the wake of sharp criticism of several controversial death-penalty decisions, the five conservative justices of the U.S. Supreme Court issued three opinions on May 13, 2019, explaining their votes in those earlier cases. The opinions, issued in connection with the apparently inconsistent orders in religious discrimination claims brought by two death-row prisoners and a decision declining to review the case of an Alabama death-row prisoner who had challenged the state’s execution process…

Facing a May 16, 2019 execution date, Alabama death-row prisoner Michael Brandon Samra (pictured) has asked the United States Supreme Court and Governor Kay Ivey to halt his execution and for the Court to consider the constitutionally of imposing the death penalty upon 19-year-old offenders. In a petition filed on April 27, Samra — a teenage offender with borderline intellectual functioning — asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the appropriate age cutoff for banning the execution of youthful…

Proponents of capital punishment have long argued for the death penalty on the grounds that it brings closure to family members of homicide victims. But science suggests that achieving closure through execution may be a myth, says family and child therapist Linda Lewis Griffith (pictured) in a May 6, 2019 column in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, and that capital punishment may actually make matters worse. To underscore that point, Griffith cites studies in the Personality and Social Psychology…

A new study of Louisiana’s death penalty reports that the state’s capital punishment system costs taxpayers at least $15.6 million a year more than a system with life without parole as the maximum sentence. The study by retired New Orleans district Chief Judge Calvin Johnson (pictured, left) and Loyola Law Professor William Quigley (pictured, right), released on May 2, 2019, found that Louisiana has spent more than $200 million on its death-penalty system in the last 15 years, resulting in a…