Publications & Testimony

Whose interests does a lawyer represent, the capital defendant whose life is at stake or the abusive father paying for his defense? Alabama death-row prisoner Nicholas Acklin (pictured) is seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of that issue because he alleges that the lawyer who represented him at trial had a financial conflict of interest that affected the way he represented Acklin in the penalty phase of his capital trial. Nick Acklin’s father, Theodis Acklin, paid for the legal services of…

Death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured) was declared “actually innocent” by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg on March 1, 2019, making Brown eligible for state compensation for the time he spent wrongfully imprisoned on Texas’ death row. “My obligation as an advocate is not to tell people what they want to hear but to tell them the truth,” Ogg said at a press conference. “Alfred Brown was wrongfully convicted through prosecutorial misconduct.” Brown was freed in 2015, ten years…

The United States Supreme Court has reversed a decision of the Alabama state courts that would have permitted the execution of Vernon Madison (pictured), a death-row prisoner whose severe dementia has left him with no memory of the crime for which he was sentenced to death and compromised his understanding of why he was to be executed. The Alabama courts had narrowly construed the Supreme Court’s past rulings that prohibited the execution of prisoners who had become mentally incompetent…

Texas is scheduled to execute Billie Wayne Coble (pictured) on February 28, 2019, despite court findings that two expert witnesses who testified for the prosecution gave “problematic” and “fabricated” testimony at his trial. Coble was sentenced to death in 1990 and resentenced in 2008 after his original sentence was overturned as a result of constitutionally deficient jury instructions. At his resentencing, the issue of future dangerousness presented a serious problem for prosecutors. Under…

During February DPIC posts infographics on race and the death penalty on our Facebook and Twitter pages. View our 2019 Black History Month infographics collection here. View our 2018 Black History Month infographics collection here. View our 2017 Black History Month infographics collection below: 2017 Black History Month Infographic Series Saying that “racial bias In the criminal justice system, including the death penalty and its application, is an undisputed fact,” the National Hispanic…

An estimated 1,500 government officials and representatives of non-governmental organizations from more than 140 countries gathered in Brussels, Belgium on February 26, 2019 for the opening of the Seventh World Congress Against the Death Penalty. The World Congress – organized by the Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty – is the world’s leading convocation on capital punishment. The four-day meeting formally opened on February 27 with a ceremony in…

Two former California death-row prisoners who had spent a combined 70 years in prison are now free men, after federal courts overturned their convictions and local prosecutors agreed to plea deals on non-capital charges. James Hardy (pictured, left) was freed on February 14, 2019 after pleading guilty to two counts of first-degree murder in exchange for a suspended sentence and release on probation. Freddie Lee Taylor (pictured, right) was released on February 20 after pleading guilty to…

Responding to the Georgia state and federal courts’ refusal to reverse a death sentence imposed on an African-American defendant by a jury tainted by racism, an ideologically diverse range of voices have called on the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. Georgia death-row prisoner Keith Tharpe (pictured) was sentenced to death by a juror who later said, “there are two types of black people: 1. Black folks and 2. N***rs,” and wondered “if black people even have souls.” Tharpe, the juror wrote in a…

Two amicus curiae briefs filed in the Racial Justice Act appeal of North Carolina death-row prisoner Rayford Burke (pictured) are asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to redress systemic problems in North Carolina’s administration of its death penalty. One brief, filed by the New York-based NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), urges the court to provide Burke “the opportunity to prove that racial bias impermissibly influenced jury selection and infected his death sentence.” A…

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pictured) has halted all executions in the state until its Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is able to develop a new execution protocol that gains approval from the courts. Responding to the findings of a federal court that likened Ohio’s three-drug lethal-injection protocol to a combination of waterboarding and chemical fire, DeWine said “Ohio is not going to execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has found it to be cruel and unusual…