Publications & Testimony

A pros­e­cu­tor’s duty, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1935, ​“is not that it shall win a case, but that jus­tice shall be done.” Yet pros­e­cu­tors across the U.S. have refused to acknowl­edge the inno­cence of defen­dants who have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, obstruct­ing release by retry­ing death-sen­tenced defen­dants despite exon­er­at­ing evi­dence, or con­di­tion­ing their release upon ​“Alford pleas,” which force defen­dants to choose between clear­ing their names or obtain­ing their free­dom. In an article for…

The jus­tices of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be favor­ing argu­ments pre­sent­ed by Louisiana death-row pris­on­er Robert McCoy (pic­tured), who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death after his lawyer, in the face of repeat­ed instruc­tions from his client to argue his inno­cence, instead told the jury that McCoy had killed three fam­i­ly mem­bers. McCoy’s tri­al lawyer, Larry English, said he ignored his clien­t’s instruc­tions and con­ced­ed guilt hop­ing jurors would…

For the sec­ond time in four months, a Missouri judge has imposed a death sen­tence after a cap­i­tal-sen­tenc­ing jury did not reach a unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing deci­sion. Greene County Circuit Judge Thomas Mountjoy sen­tenced 49-year-old Craig Wood (pic­tured) to death on January 11 for the February 2014 killing of 10-year-old Hailey Owens. Wood was con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der in November 2017, but the jury — empan­eled from out-of-coun­ty jurors as a…

With the back­ing of the state’s gov­er­nor and attor­ney gen­er­al, Democratic and Republican spon­sors of a bill to repeal Washington’s cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment statute have expressed opti­mism that the state may abol­ish the death penal­ty in 2018. In 2017, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, was joined by for­mer Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, in call­ing on the leg­is­la­ture to end the state’s death penal­ty. Ferguson, who has said “[t]here is no role for capital…

States that have recent­ly abol­ished the death penal­ty have not expe­ri­enced the ​“parade of hor­ri­bles” — includ­ing increased mur­der rates — pre­dict­ed by death-penal­ty pro­po­nents, accord­ing to death-penal­ty experts who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the 2017 American Bar Association nation­al meet­ing in New York City. Instead, the pan­elists said, abo­li­tion appears to have cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to move for­ward with oth­er broad­er criminal justice…

To deter future use of the death penal­ty in their coun­ty, the Blaine County, Idaho County Commissioners on January 2 vot­ed to con­sid­er with­draw­ing from the state’s Capital Crimes Defense Fund as a way to choke off state fund­ing in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions. ​“This is a way for our coun­ty to say we don’t sup­port the death penal­ty, and that we don’t want the pros­e­cu­tor seek­ing it in Blaine County,” said Commissioner Larry Schoen (pic­tured), who proposed the…

Family mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims share no sin­gle, uni­form response to the death penal­ty, but two recent pub­li­ca­tions illus­trate that a grow­ing num­ber of these fam­i­lies are now advo­cat­ing against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In From Death Into Life, a fea­ture arti­cle in the January 8, 2018 print edi­tion of the Jesuit mag­a­zine America, Lisa Murtha pro­files the sto­ries of how sev­er­al promi­nent vic­tim-advo­cates against the death penal­ty came to hold those views. And in a recently…

The U.S. Supreme Court has direct­ed a fed­er­al appeals court to recon­sid­er whether Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured) is enti­tled to fed­er­al court review of his claim that he was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death because he is black. On January 8, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6 – 3 opin­ion send­ing Tharpe’s case — in which a racist juror used an offen­sive slur to describe the defen­dant and doubt­ed whether African Americans have souls — back to…