Publications & Testimony

To view executions of prisoners who have been denied relief under Hurst, click here. The Florida Supreme Court has declared that it will apply its decisions in Hurst v. State and Asay v. State — which held that non-unanimous jury recommendations of death violate the Florida state constitution and the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — to new death penalty cases and to older cases in which the direct appeal process was final on or after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Ring v. Arizona in June…

The Fresno County District Attorney’s office has announced that it is dropping the death penalty against Douglas Stankewitz (pictured), California’s longest-serving death-row prisoner. After reviewing extensive mitigating evidence that Stankewitz’s trial counsel had failed to investigate, Fresno prosecutors announced on April 19, 2019 that a sentence of life without parole would be “fair and just” in Stankewitz’s case and that they will not pursue a third capital-sentencing proceeding against…

Three southern states have taken action to limit the public’s access to information relating to executions by increasing secrecy surrounding lethal-injection drug suppliers. On April 12, 2019, the Texas Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision that would have disclosed the source of lethal-injection drugs used to carry out executions in Texas in 2014, asserting that disclosure “would create a substantial threat of physical harm to the source’s employees and others.” On April 9, Arkansas…

A second Muslim death-row prisoner has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging Alabama’s policy of allowing only a Protestant Christian chaplain in the execution chamber. Charles Burton, Jr. (pictured), converted to Islam 47 years ago. In a complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Burton, who was sentenced to death in 1992, argues that Alabama’s policy violates the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment and the…

A civilian federal appeals court has dealt another blow to the Guantánamo military commission death-penalty proceedings, striking more than two years of decisions in the USS Cole bombing prosecution of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Al-Nashiri because of a military judge’s undisclosed conflict of interest. Al-Nashiri faces capital charges for his alleged role in the suicide bombing attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000 in which 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and another 39 were…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a South Dakota death-row prisoner whose jurors made anti-gay statements and relied on homophobic beliefs in deciding to sentence him to death. On April 15, 2019, the Court without comment denied a petition filed by Charles Rhines (pictured) asking the Court to declare that the constitutional right to an impartial jury applies equally to bias against a defendant’s sexual orientation. In a statement responding to the Court’s decision…

In a contentious ruling issued in the early morning hours of April 12, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a stay of execution issued by lower federal courts and cleared the way for Alabama to execute Christopher Price (pictured). The Court’s 5 – 4 decision, issued after 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, came after Alabama had postponed Price’s execution minutes before the midnight Central time expiration of his death warrant, with the lower court stay of execution still in effect. Joined by the three…

In a vote death-penalty opponents praised as “historic,” a veto-proof supermajority of the New Hampshire legislature gave final approval to a bill that would repeal the state’s death penalty statute. By a vote of 17 – 6, the senators voted on April 11, 2019 to end capital prosecutions in the Granite State, exceeding the two-thirds majority necessary to override an anticipated veto by Governor Chris Sununu. In March, the state House of Representatives passed the same abolition bill, HB 455, by a…

The Missouri Supreme Court has ordered a new sentencing trial for Marvin D. Rice (pictured), a former sheriff’s deputy whose trial judge sentenced him to death despite the votes of 11 of his 12 jurors to sentence him to life. On April 2, 2019, the court vacated the death sentence imposed by St. Charles County Judge Kelly Wayne Parker in 2017 under the state’s controversial “hung jury” sentencing provision. Under that law, the trial judge has authority to independently evaluate the evidence and…

Executions worldwide have fallen to their lowest levels in a decade, according to a new report released April 9, 2019 by Amnesty International. In its annual Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions 2018, the human rights organization says it recorded at least 690 executions in 20 countries in 2018, a 31% decline from the 993 executions it recorded in 23 nations in 2017 and 58% below the 1,634 reported executions in 2015. Five countries accounted for 84% of all recorded executions — Iran…