Publications & Testimony

Over a sharp dissent by three justices, the United States Supreme Court has let stand the death sentence imposed on a Georgia prisoner who was suffering from dementia, brain damage, and borderline intellectual functioning, but whose trial lawyer failed to present any mitigating evidence. On January 7, 2019, the Supreme Court denied the petition for writ of certiorari filed on behalf of death-row prisoner Donnie Cleveland Lance seeking the Court’s review of the Georgia Supreme Court’s denial of…

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered the Virginia Supreme Court to address a claim brought by former death-row prisoner Justin Wolfe (pictured) that prosecutors had engaged in unconstitutional vindictive prosecution against him after federal courts had found that his conviction and death sentence had been obtained through egregious prosecutorial misconduct. The Virginia Supreme Court had ruled that Wolfe’s guilty plea to the enhanced charges brought against him after his first conviction was…

Nevada death-row prisoner Scott Dozier (pictured), who unsuccessfully tried to force the state to execute him, was found dead in his prison cell on January 5, 2019 of an apparent suicide. News reports indicated that Dozier had hanged himself. Dozier had told the court and several reporters that he would rather die than spend life in prison and had attempted to speed up his execution by dropping his appeals. However, his prior suicide attempt raised questions about his mental state and his…

As he prepared for retirement, the long-time director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said he does not support the death penalty and believes the punishment is on its way out in Georgia and across the country. In a television interview on his final day of work as GBI director, Vernon Keenan (pictured) told WXIA-TV, Atlanta’s NBC television affiliate, that he has ​“never believed in the death penalty” and “[t]he day will come when we won’t have the death penalty in Georgia and in the…

Nations that abolish the death penalty then tend to see their murder rates decline, according to a December 2018 report by the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center, a Washington, DC-based organization that promotes human rights and democracy in Iran. The report examined murder rates in 11 countries that have abolished capital punishment, finding that ten of those countries experienced a decline in murder rates in the decade following abolition. Countries were included if they met the following…

The Florida Supreme Court issued rulings in thirteen death penalty cases in the last two weeks of 2018, upholding convictions and death sentences in ten, reversing one death sentence, remanding one case for a new hearing on intellectual disability, and allowing limited DNA testing in another case. The most notable of the decisions came in the cases of Gerald Murray (pictured left) and Steven Taylor (pictured, right), decided on December 20, 2018, who were sentenced to death for the same murder…

The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the U.S. Supreme Court after the 2017 – 2018 court term and his replacement with Justice Brett Kavanaugh marked a potentially pivotal change in the constitution of the Court with respect to death-penalty issues. During Justice Kennedy’s thirty years on the Court, he became known as a swing vote, siding with both the conservative and liberal wings of the Court. His role as the Court’s swing vote extended to death-penalty cases, in which he provided…