Publications & Testimony

Soon after pass­ing leg­is­la­tion to make death penal­ty tri­als fair­er by pre­vent­ing judges from over­rid­ing jury rec­om­men­da­tions of life sen­tences, the Alabama leg­is­la­ture is tak­ing steps to enact a bill that crit­ics say would make cap­i­tal appeals far less fair. The bill, denom­i­nat­ed the ​“Fair Justice Act,” would con­strict the amount of time death-row pris­on­ers have to file appeals, impose dead­lines for judges to rule on appeals, and require pris­on­ers to pursue…

The U.S. Supreme Court has vacat­ed the Alabama state courts’ rejec­tion of a pris­on­er’s claim that he is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and direct­ed the state to recon­sid­er his claim in light of the Court’s recent deci­sion in Moore v. Texas requir­ing states to employ sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly accept­ed stan­dards in deter­min­ing whether a death-row pris­on­er is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. On May 1, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court…

John Jackson, the for­mer Navarro County, Texas pros­e­cu­tor and judge, is on tri­al for ethics vio­la­tions in the 1992 cap­i­tal tri­al of Cameron Todd Willingham (pic­tured), which many believe led to the exe­cu­tion of an innocent…

An inde­pen­dent study of the costs of seek­ing and impos­ing the death penal­ty in Oklahoma, pre­pared for the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission, has con­clud­ed that seek­ing the death penal­ty in Oklahoma ​“incurs sig­nif­i­cant­ly more time, effort, and costs on aver­age, as com­pared to when the death penal­ty is not sought in first degree mur­der cas­es.” The report — pre­pared by Seattle University crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sors Peter A. Collins and Matthew J. Hickman and law professor…

Walter Ogrod was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Philadelphia in 1996 for the 1988 mur­der of a 4‑year-old girl, whose body was found in a dis­card­ed tele­vi­sion box. Ogrod, who is devel­op­men­tal­ly dis­abled, has long main­tained his inno­cence, but despite sig­nif­i­cant irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the case and amidst alle­ga­tions of offi­cial mis­con­duct, local pros­e­cu­tors have fought efforts to obtain DNA test­ing of the phys­i­cal evi­dence and to inves­ti­gate the role a dis­cred­it­ed prison infor­mant played in…

Calling eye­wit­ness accounts ​“hor­ri­fy­ing,” attor­neys for Arkansas pris­on­er Kenneth Williams (pic­tured) are seek­ing the preser­va­tion of evi­dence and ​“a full inves­ti­ga­tion” into what they described as Williams’ ​“prob­lem­at­ic…

The con­di­tions in which pris­on­ers on Texas’ death row are con­fined are ​“harsh and inhu­mane,” vio­late inter­na­tion­al human rights norms, and amount to ​“a severe and relent­less act of tor­ture,” accord­ing to a new study by the University of Texas School of Law Human Rights…

After spend­ing more than a year study­ing Oklahoma​’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment prac­tices, the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission has unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed that the state extend its cur­rent mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions ​“until sig­nif­i­cant reforms are accom­plished.” The bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion issued its report on April 25, 2017, reach­ing what it char­ac­ter­ized as ​“dis­turb­ing” find­ings that ​“led Commission mem­bers to ques­tion whether the death penal­ty can be…

Arkansas car­ried out the nation’s first dou­ble exe­cu­tion in near­ly 17 years on April 24, 2017. The state exe­cut­ed Jack Jones (pic­tured, l.) and Marcel Williams (pic­tured, r.) about three hours apart, with Williams’ exe­cu­tion delayed fol­low­ing alle­ga­tions that Jones’ exe­cu­tion may have been…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a final order refus­ing to release ille­gal­ly import­ed med­i­cines that the states of Texas and Arizona had intend­ed to use in…