Publications & Testimony

At an inter­na­tion­al death penal­ty con­fer­ence in Washington, DC, host­ed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the European Union strong­ly renewed its call for a glob­al end to the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In his open­ing remarks for the con­fer­ence, David O’Sullivan, the European Union’s Ambassador to the United States, expressed opti­mism about recent declines in the use of the death penal­ty in the United States and said ​“the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment … would put the U.S. on…

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion released June 26, the United States Supreme Court upheld the deci­sion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, deny­ing review of Texas death-row pris­on­er Erick Daniel Davila’s claim that he had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion by his state appeal lawyer. The case, Davila v. Davis, raised the ques­tion of whether two ear­li­er Supreme Court deci­sions (Martinez v. Ryan and Trevino v. Thaler) per­mit­ted…

Lawyers for William Morva (pic­tured), a seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill death-row pris­on­er suf­fer­ing from a delu­sion­al dis­or­der that leaves him unable to dis­tin­guish his delu­sions from real­i­ty, has peti­tioned Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe seek­ing clemen­cy from his sched­uled July 6, 2017…

The New Orleans District Attorney’s office has decid­ed not to pur­sue the death penal­ty in two high-pro­file mur­der cas­es, high­light­ing a trend in Louisiana away from the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In a one-week peri­od, Leon Cannizzaro (pic­tured), the District Attorney for Orleans Parish, announced that his office would not seek the death penal­ty against Travis Boys, charged with fatal­ly shoot­ing a New Orleans police officer,…

When University of Colorado Boulder soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Michael Radelet began doing research on the death penal­ty in the 1970s, the not­ed death-penal­ty schol­ar tells Colorado Public Radio, he did­n’t have an opin­ion about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and ​“did­n’t know any­thing about it.” After research­ing issues of race, inno­cence, and the death penal­ty, he came to have grave…

Ha’im Al Matin Sharif (pic­tured), for­mer­ly known as Charles Robins, has been released from Nevada’s death row, near­ly 30 years after he was con­vict­ed of killing his girl­friend’s 11-month-old daugh­ter, after med­ical evi­dence revealed that the baby died from infan­tile scurvy, rather than from phys­i­cal abuse. Prosecutors agreed to amend the charges against Sharif and release him on time served after a pros­e­cu­tion doc­tor con­firmed that Brittany Smith actually…

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion released June 19, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly denied death-row pris­on­er James McWilliams (pic­tured) the assis­tance of an inde­pen­dent men­tal health…

In a Washington Post op-ed, for­mer New Mexico Governor and United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson (pic­tured) — who in 2009 signed a bill to abol­ish his state’s death penal­ty — urged that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment be abol­ished in the United States, say­ing “[t]he prac­tice is wrong and I hope it isn’t long for this…

In a recent com­men­tary arti­cle in Medium, psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Frederick J. Frese, III (pic­tured) — a Marine Corps vet­er­an who has him­self been diag­nosed with para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia — argues that Congress and state leg­is­la­tures should pass laws exempt­ing peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness from the death penal­ty. ​“Supporters and oppo­nents of the death penal­ty agree that it should only be reserved for the most cul­pa­ble and delib­er­ate of crim­i­nals who com­mit heinous crimes,” Frese writes. He…

, an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled pris­on­er whose con­vic­tion and death sen­tence was over­turned in 1980, was freed from prison in Texas on June 12, 2017, hav­ing spent 35 years in jail with­out a valid con­vic­tion and with­out being retried. Hartfield, whose IQ is in the 50s or 60s, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1977 on charges that he had mur­dered a bus sta­tion work­er. Hartfield con­fessed to the crime, but has long assert­ed his inno­cence and that his…