Publications & Testimony

Prosecutors in Augusta, Georgia are seek­ing the death penal­ty against a man accused of mur­der­ing the Rev. Rene Robert (pic­tured), despite their knowl­edge that the Franciscan priest had request­ed that the death penal­ty not be used ​“under any cir­cum­stances” if he were killed. On January 31, Catholic Bishops from Georgia and Florida trav­eled to Augusta to meet with Hank Sims, the act­ing district…

A BuzzFeed News inves­ti­ga­tion reports that Texas sought to import exe­cu­tion drugs from a sup­pli­er in India that the Indian Narcotics Control Bureau shut down for alleged­ly sell­ing psy­chotrop­ic drugs and opi­oids ille­gal­ly to cus­tomers in the United States and…

Missouri plans to exe­cute Mark Christeson (pic­tured) on January 31, with­out his case ever receiv­ing sub­stan­tive review in a federal…

A new study reports that at least 201 Florida death row pris­on­ers — includ­ing at least 134 whom judges sen­tenced to death after juries had returned non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions — may be eli­gi­ble for resen­tenc­ing hear­ings as a result of recent rul­ings by the United States and Florida Supreme Courts declar­ing the state’s death sen­tenc­ing practices…

After receiv­ing evi­dence dur­ing a five-day hear­ing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael R. Merz ruled on January 26 that Ohio’s lethal injec­tion process will cre­ate a sub­stan­tial and objec­tive­ly intol­er­a­ble risk of seri­ous harm in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. Based on that rul­ing, the court issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion stay­ing the exe­cu­tions of Ronald Phillips, Raymond Tibbetts, and Gary Otte. Ohio has not con­duct­ed an…

Alleging wrong­ful pros­e­cu­tion, Texas death row pris­on­er Terry Edwards (pic­tured), who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 26, is seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present new evi­dence that his case was taint­ed by racial­ly-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, and false and mis­lead­ing foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. Edwards was pros­e­cut­ed by Dallas County assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney Thomas D’Amore, who, the defense says, was lead…

Lethal injec­tion as prac­ticed in U.S. exe­cu­tions ​“is an imper­son­ation of med­i­cine pop­u­lat­ed by real doc­tors who don’t acknowl­edge the decep­tion,” Dr. Joel Zivot (pic­tured), an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of anes­the­si­ol­o­gy at Emory University School of Medicine, writes in an op-ed for CNN. Setting aside the ques­tion of the right­ness or wrong­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment itself, he says, ​“it’s time to reject lethal injec­tion” as the method of…

A Texas Court of Appeals ruled on January 19, 2017 that all charges against Jerry Hartfield should be dis­missed with prej­u­dice after the state had kept the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled for­mer death row pris­on­er in prison for 32 years with­out retry­ing him after his con­vic­tion had been over­turned. Calling the sit­u­a­tion a ​“crim­i­nal judi­cial night­mare,” the court ruled that the three-decade delay in try­ing Hartfield vio­lat­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a speedy trial.

Isaiah McCoy (pic­tured), a for­mer Delaware death row inmate, was exon­er­at­ed on January 19, 2017, when a judge acquit­ted him at a retri­al. He is the 157^th per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row in the United States, the first in 2017, and the first in…

Inspired by the case of Robin ​“Rocky” Myers (pic­tured), an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and pos­si­bly inno­cent Alabama death row pris­on­er whom an elect­ed state judge sen­tenced to death despite a 9 – 3 jury rec­om­men­da­tion for life, a pan­el of faith lead­ers gath­ered in Montgomery, Alabama to dis­cuss reli­gious views on the death penal­ty and the inter­sec­tion of faith and jus­tice. Before the dis­cus­sion began, the faith lead­ers and the audi­ence viewed a…