Publications & Testimony

Alabama exe­cut­ed Torrey McNabb (pic­tured) on October 19, amid ques­tions of state inter­fer­ence in the judi­cial process, result­ing in anoth­er appar­ent fail­ure by the drug mida­zo­lam to ren­der a pris­on­er insen­sate dur­ing an exe­cu­tion. Alabama prison offi­cials defend­ed the exe­cu­tion — which took 35 min­utes — as con­form­ing with state pro­to­col, most of which has been with­held from the pub­lic. Montgomery…

The United States Supreme Court has ordered the Florida Supreme Court to recon­sid­er a deci­sion that had denied a death-row pris­on­er’s claim that he was inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because he has Intellectual Disability. On October 16, the Court reversed and remand­ed the case of Tavares Wright (pic­tured, left), direct­ing the Florida courts to recon­sid­er his intel­lec­­tu­al-dis­­a­bil­i­­ty claim in light of the…

County Commissioners in Pennington County, South Dakota have approved bud­get increas­es of a half-mil­lion dol­lars each for the coun­ty’s courts and its pub­lic defend­er office for 2018, large­ly as a result of two high-pro­­file death-penal­­ty pros­e­cu­tions. Taxpayers will shoul­der most of the finan­cial bur­den result­ing from the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions of Rapid City defen­dants Jonathon Klinetobe and Richard Hirth,…

Signaling a strength­en­ing of the Catholic Church’s offi­cial oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Pope Francis (pic­tured) marked the 25^th anniver­sary of the Catholic Church’s pro­mul­ga­tion of amend­ments to its Catechism by declar­ing the death penal­ty​“con­trary to the Gospel” and​“an inhu­mane mea­sure that, regard­less of how it is car­ried out, abas­es human dig­ni­ty.” During Vatican cer­e­monies on October 11 com­mem­o­rat­ing the 1992 amend­ments, Pope…

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied review of a peti­tion filed by lawyers on behalf of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri—accused of orches­trat­ing al-Qaida’s October 12, 2000 sui­cide bomb­ing of the USS Cole war­ship off the coast of Yemen—chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of his death penal­ty tri­al before a Guantánamo Bay mil­i­tary com­mis­sion. But in what has been described as​“a stun­ning set­back” to what would have been the first death-penalty…

An Arkansas tri­al judge has dis­missed all charges against for­mer death-row pris­on­er, Rickey Dale Newman (pic­tured), set­ting him free on October 11 after hav­ing spent near­ly 17 years in cus­tody fol­low­ing the February 2001 mur­der of a tran­sient woman in a​“hobo park” on the out­skirts of Van Buren, Arkansas. Newman became the 160^th per­son since 1973 to be exon­er­at­ed after hav­ing hav­ing been wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death.

A St. Charles County tri­al judge has sen­tenced a Missouri man to death two months after 11 of the 12 jurors in his case had voted to…

In sep­a­rate state­ments issued in con­nec­tion with the 15^th World and European Day against the Death Penalty on October 10, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and European Union U.S. Ambassador David O’Sullivan have called upon all nations to halt sched­uled exe­cu­tions and abol­ish the death penal­ty. In his first ever state­ment on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment since becom­ing Secretary-General on January 1, 2017, Guterres described capital…

Though no phys­i­cal evi­dence links him to the crime, Texas is set to exe­cute Robert Pruett (pic­tured) on October 12 for the 1999 stab­bing death of a state cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer who was at the cen­ter of a prison cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion. Results of a DNA test of the mur­der weapon in 2015 found DNA that matched nei­ther Pruett nor the victim,…

Two cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tors have elect­ed to pur­sue the death penal­ty against aging or infirm defen­dants who will almost cer­tain­ly nev­er be exe­cut­ed have raised ques­tions about the costs and ben­e­fits of cap­i­tal charges and the arbi­trary exer­cise of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion. Federal pros­e­cu­tors in Missouri are seek­ing the death penal­ty against 61-year-old Ulysses Jones Jr., a man with ter­mi­nal renal dis­ease, for the 2006 killing of…