Publications & Testimony

In a victory for the media and advocates of open government, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on March 18, 2019 that Alabama must disclose key portions of its highly secretive lethal-injection execution protocol to the public. The Associated Press, the Montgomery Advertiser, and Alabama Media Group had sued for access to the protocol, which came under intense scrutiny in the wake of Alabama’s failed attempt to execute Doyle Lee Hamm…

For the second time in just over one month, the United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for the execution of an African-American prisoner in the face of strong evidence of racial or religious bias. On March 18, 2019, the Court unanimously declined to hear an appeal from Georgia death-row prisoner Keith Tharpe (pictured), who argued his death sentence was unconstitutionally tainted by the participation of racist white juror who called him a “ni***er” and questioned “if black people even…

Beth Kissileff (pictured), a writer and the wife of a rabbi who survived the shooting rampage that killed eleven worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice not to seek the death penalty against the man charged with committing those murders. In an opinion article for the Religion News Service, Kissileff wrote that she and her husband, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman of Pittsburgh’s New Light Congregation, engaged federal prosecutors and a social worker…

Two prosecutors with different philosophical perspectives on capital punishment have called on their respective states to abolish capital punishment. Boulder County, Colorado, District Attorney Michael Dougherty (pictured, left), who opposes capital punishment in principle, and former Washoe County, Nevada, homicide prosecutor Thomas E. Viloria (pictured, right), who has successfully obtained four death verdicts, have added their voices to support efforts to repeal the death penalty in their…

On June 21, 2019, the United States Supreme Court vacated Curtis Flowers’ conviction in a 7 – 2 decision. For more information about the opinion, read DPIC’s summary here. See also Supreme Court Vacates Conviction in Mississippi Death Penalty Case Finding Race Discrimination in Jury Selection. Pre-Oral Argument Summary Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Giovanni Flowers has been tried six times for a quadruple murder in Winona, Mississippi. His first three trials were reversed because of…

In October 2018, the Washington Supreme Court unanimously struck down the state’s death penalty, finding that it had been “imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” In reaching its decision in State v. Gregory, the court relied upon a study of twenty-five years of Washington State capital prosecutions that demonstrated that Washington juries were 4.5 times more likely to impose a death sentence on a black defendant than on a white defendant in a similar case. The authors of that…

California Governor Gavin Newsom on March 13, 2019 declared a moratorium on executions in the state with the nation’s largest death row. Newsom implemented the moratorium through an executive order granting reprieves to the 737 prisoners currently on California’s death row. He also announced that he was withdrawing the state’s execution protocol — the administrative plan by which executions are carried out — and was closing down the state’s execution chamber. In his executive order imposing the…

In the past few years, the governors of California, Pennsylvania, Washington, Colorado, and Oregon have put a halt to executions in their states because of problems in the death penalty system. Below are some of the reasons they gave for for their actions. Governor Gavin Newsom, California, March 13, 2019 “Our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure. It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation.