Publications & Testimony

One month into California’s moratorium on executions, the historic action by Governor Gavin Newsom (pictured) is drawing high praise from exonerees, mixed reviews from victims’ families, and unusually personal condemnation from political adversaries. Kirk Bloodsworth — the first former death-row prisoner exonerated by DNA evidence — wrote that he was “thrilled” by the news of the moratorium. Bloodsworth, the interim executive director of the death-row exonerees’ organization, Witness to…

Arguing that a brain-damaged woman facing the death penalty for the starving death of her young daughter “was incapable of representing herself,” lawyers from the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender have asked that they be reappointed as her counsel if the case advances to the penalty-phase of her trial for life or death. Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge George Hutchinson had permitted Tiffany Moss (pictured) to discharge her lawyers and represent herself, even though she has not…

In an action condemned by the United Nations and human rights groups as a flagrant violation of international law, Saudi Arabia beheaded 37 people, including juvenile offenders, in six separate locations on April 23, 2019. It was the nation’s largest mass execution since January 2016. Most of the people executed were members of the Shi’a Muslim minority community. The human rights advocates blasted Saudi officials for targeting politically disfavored groups and disregarding international fair…

Texas has executed John William King (pictured), one of three men convicted of the brutal lynching of James Byrd, Jr., after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in his case. King’s lawyers had asked the Court to grant a stay of his scheduled April 24, 2019 execution after a divided Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voted 5 – 4 on April 22 to permit the execution to proceed. King, an avowed white supremacist, had maintained since the time of his arrest that he was not present at the time of…

At least five people were exonerated in 2018 after having been wrongfully convicted in cases that involved the misuse or threatened use of the death penalty, a DPIC analysis of data accompanying a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has shown. The National Registry’s annual report on wrongful convictions, Exonerations in 2018, recorded a record 151 new exonerations across the United States in 2018, including 68 exonerations resulting from wrongful homicide convictions. Two of…

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…