Publications & Testimony

Lynching has long been regard­ed as a region­al phe­nom­e­non, but in an updat­ed edi­tion of its land­mark 2015 report ​“Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror,” the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has now doc­u­ment­ed more than 300 lynch­ings of African Americans in states out­side the Deep South. ​“Racial ter­ror lynch­ing was a nation­al prob­lem,” said EJI Director Bryan Stevenson (pic­tured). More than six mil­lion African American migrants fled ​“as refugees and exiles…

As we reach the mid-point of the year, exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences are on pace to remain near his­toric lows in 2017, con­tin­u­ing the long-term his­toric decline in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment across the United States. As of June 30, six states have car­ried out 13 exe­cu­tions, with 30 oth­er exe­cu­tions that had been sched­uled for that peri­od halt­ed by judi­cial stays or injunc­tions, guber­na­to­r­i­al reprieves or com­mu­ta­tion, or resched­uled. By con­trast, at the midpoint…

A divid­ed U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on June 28 reversed the deci­sion of a fed­er­al dis­trict court that had stayed exe­cu­tions in Ohio. In an 8 – 6 en banc deci­sion, the court vot­ed to allow Ohio to pro­ceed with exe­cu­tions using a pro­posed com­bi­na­tion of the con­tro­ver­sial seda­tive mida­zo­lam, the par­a­lyt­ic drug pan­curo­ni­um bro­mide, and the heart-stop­ping drug potas­si­um chlo­ride. Midazolam has been impli­cat­ed in botched…

In DPIC’s lat­est pod­cast, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Litigation Director Christina Swarns (pic­tured, cen­ter, out­side the U.S. Supreme Court fol­low­ing the argu­ment in Buck v. Davis) dis­cuss­es the issues of race, future dan­ger­ous­ness, and inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion pre­sent­ed in the land­mark case. She calls the case — in which a Texas tri­al lawyer who rep­re­sent­ed 21 clients sent to death row pre­sent­ed an expert wit­ness who tes­ti­fied that his own client was…

At an inter­na­tion­al death penal­ty con­fer­ence in Washington, DC, host­ed by the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the European Union strong­ly renewed its call for a glob­al end to the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In his open­ing remarks for the con­fer­ence, David O’Sullivan, the European Union’s Ambassador to the United States, expressed opti­mism about recent declines in the use of the death penal­ty in the United States and said ​“the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment … would put the U.S. on…

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion released June 26, the United States Supreme Court upheld the deci­sion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, deny­ing review of Texas death-row pris­on­er Erick Daniel Davila’s claim that he had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion by his state appeal lawyer. The case, Davila v. Davis, raised the ques­tion of whether two ear­li­er Supreme Court deci­sions (Martinez v. Ryan and Trevino v. Thaler) per­mit­ted…

Lawyers for William Morva (pic­tured), a seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill death-row pris­on­er suf­fer­ing from a delu­sion­al dis­or­der that leaves him unable to dis­tin­guish his delu­sions from real­i­ty, has peti­tioned Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe seek­ing clemen­cy from his sched­uled July 6, 2017…

The New Orleans District Attorney’s office has decid­ed not to pur­sue the death penal­ty in two high-pro­file mur­der cas­es, high­light­ing a trend in Louisiana away from the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In a one-week peri­od, Leon Cannizzaro (pic­tured), the District Attorney for Orleans Parish, announced that his office would not seek the death penal­ty against Travis Boys, charged with fatal­ly shoot­ing a New Orleans police officer,…

When University of Colorado Boulder soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Michael Radelet began doing research on the death penal­ty in the 1970s, the not­ed death-penal­ty schol­ar tells Colorado Public Radio, he did­n’t have an opin­ion about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and ​“did­n’t know any­thing about it.” After research­ing issues of race, inno­cence, and the death penal­ty, he came to have grave…

Ha’im Al Matin Sharif (pic­tured), for­mer­ly known as Charles Robins, has been released from Nevada’s death row, near­ly 30 years after he was con­vict­ed of killing his girl­friend’s 11-month-old daugh­ter, after med­ical evi­dence revealed that the baby died from infan­tile scurvy, rather than from phys­i­cal abuse. Prosecutors agreed to amend the charges against Sharif and release him on time served after a pros­e­cu­tion doc­tor con­firmed that Brittany Smith actually…