Publications & Testimony

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…

A federal appeals court has declared that Virginia for many years housed its death-row prisoners in unconstitutional conditions and has barred the state from reverting to its prior practices. On May 3, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that the Commonwealth’s former policy of 23- or 24-hour per day solitary confinement of death-row prisoners constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The 2 – 1 decision upheld a ruling by the U.S.

A two-week federal trial on the constitutionality of Arkansas’s lethal-injection protocol came to a close May 2, 2019, as the parties presented legal arguments to the court after eight days of testimony. U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker must now determine whether the state’s three-drug protocol beginning with the sedative midazolam is allowable. Lawyers representing a group of death-row prisoners presented testimony from witnesses of recent executions, as well as medical experts who said…

Sometimes you need a joke about a cute but very angry desert rain frog to prepare an unsuspecting audience for a serious discussion of lethal-injection executions in the United States. That was the approach undertaken by Last Week Tonight, the satirical weekly HBO comedy-news show hosted by John Oliver, as Oliver addressed the deadly serious issue of lethal injection in the show’s May 5, 2019 episode. Oliver called the death penalty “a wrong, bad thing the government should not be able to do,”…

A Texas trial court judge has formally declared Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured) “actually innocent” of the murder charges that led to his wrongful conviction and death sentence in 2005. The order, issued on May 3, 2019 by Harris County District Court Judge George Powell, paves the way for Brown to receive compensation from the state for the ten years he was wrongfully incarcerated on death row for the killing of a Houston police officer. Brown was exonerated in 2015 after evidence showed that…

For the second time in as many years, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu (pictured, left) has vetoed a bill to repeal the state’s death penalty. Sununu’s action on May 3, 2019 sets the stage for an anticipated attempt later in the legislative session to override the Governor’s veto. A two-thirds vote in each house is required to override. The New Hampshire legislature also voted to repeal the death penalty during its 2018 legislative session, but fell short of the two-thirds majority…

Tennessee executed Sedley Alley in 2006 for the brutal rape and murder of Marine Lance Corporal Suzanne Collins, after having denied him DNA testing that his lawyers believed could have established his innocence. Now, after new evidence suggests that another man may have committed the murder, the Innocence Project has filed a petition in Shelby County (Memphis) Criminal Court on behalf of Alley’s estate renewing Alley’s request for DNA testing. Local counsel also sent a letter to Governor Bill…

Christian church leaders from Catholic and Protestant denominations across Louisiana have called upon state lawmakers to pass legislation to end the death penalty in the Bayou State. On April 25, 2019, the Louisiana Interchurch Conference and two dozen faith representatives held a press conference on the steps of the state capitol in Baton Rouge advocating for legislation to abolish the state’s capital punishment law and pledging their support for as long as it takes for abolition efforts to…

A federal district court has overturned the conviction of Genesis Hill (pictured), who was sentenced to death in Ohio in 1991 for the death of his six-month-old daughter, Domika, based upon a questionable shaken-baby diagnosis. On April 24, 2019, Chief Judge Edmund A. Sargus, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio found that Ohio prosecutors had unconstitutionally withheld exculpatory evidence that called into question the credibility of a key witness and the testimony…