Publications & Testimony

Defense attor­neys for Travis Bredhold, a Kentucky defen­dant fac­ing the death penal­ty for a mur­der com­mit­ted when he was 18 years old, are ask­ing a judge to extend the death-penal­ty exemp­tion for juve­nile offend­ers to those younger than age 21. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court (pic­tured) ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penal­ty was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment when applied to offend­ers who were under age 18…

Thirty years ago, film­mak­er Errol Morris, who direct­ed the doc­u­men­tary ​“The Thin Blue Line,” helped to exon­er­ate Texas death-row pris­on­er Dale Adams, false­ly accused of mur­der­ing a police offi­cer. During the course of mak­ing the film, Morris met the noto­ri­ous Texas pros­e­cu­tion psy­chi­a­trist, Dr. James Grigson, who rou­tine­ly tes­ti­fied that cap­i­tal defen­dants — includ­ing the inno­cent Mr. Adams — posed a risk of future…

QUESTION PRESENTED: Whether the Fifth Circuit erred in hold­ing that 18 U.S.C. § 3599(f) with­holds ​“rea­son­ably nec­es­sary” resources to inves­ti­gate and devel­op an inef­fec­tive- assis­tance-of-coun­sel claim that state habeas coun­sel for­feit­ed, where the claimant’s exist­ing evi­dence does not meet the ulti­mate bur­den of proof at the time the § 3599(f) motion is…

Exonerated: A History of the Innocence Movement, by Robert J. Norris, describes the rise of the ​“inno­cence move­ment,” the lawyers, inves­ti­ga­tors, jour­nal­ists, law­mak­ers, and orga­ni­za­tions that have worked to uncov­er wrong­ful con­vic­tions, edu­cate the pub­lic about the prob­lem, and reform the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem to pre­vent future mis­takes. For the book, Norris inter­viewed 37 key lead­ers on the issue, includ­ing Innocence Project co-founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, and Rob…

An Ohio appeals court heard argu­ment on June 6 on whether to grant a new tri­al to for­mer death-row pris­on­er Kevin Keith (pic­tured), whose death sen­tence was com­mut­ed to life with­out parole by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland in 2010 amid con­cerns that he may be inno­cent. Keith, who has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence of the three 1994 mur­ders for which he was sen­tenced to death, pre­sent­ed argu­ment to the Ohio Court of Appeals for the 3^rd…

From 2007 to 2013, Dallas sen­tenced twelve cap­i­tal­ly charged defen­dants to death — more than any oth­er coun­ty in Texas—and Dallas ranks sec­ond nation­al­ly, behind only Harris County (Houston), in the num­ber it has exe­cut­ed since 1972. But the coun­ty has not imposed any new death sen­tences since then, and the recent life sen­tences in the cap­i­tal tri­als of Justin Smith and Erbie Bowser high­light a statewide trend…

Robert Melson (pic­tured), an Alabama death-row pris­on­er whose clemen­cy peti­tion alleges that aban­don­ment by his post-con­vic­tion lawyers pre­vent­ed him from ade­quate­ly chal­leng­ing the flawed foren­sic evi­dence in his case, received a stay of exe­cu­tion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit on a chal­lenge to Alabama’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col. Melson was con­vict­ed of three mur­ders at a Popeye’s restau­rant in 1994. A sur­vivor of the crime recognized…

The Indiana Court of Appeals has void­ed the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col. In a rul­ing on June 1, 2017, the state inter­me­di­ate appeals court held that the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC) had failed to com­ply with state rule­mak­ing pro­ce­dures when it adopt­ed a nev­er-before-used exe­cu­tion pro­to­col with­out pub­lic notice or com­ment. In 2014, the DOC announced that it had adopt­ed a new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col ​“infor­mal­ly as an inter­nal DOC pol­i­cy.” The pro­to­col called for a…

Todd Kohlhepp (pic­tured) plead­ed guilty to sev­en South Carolina mur­ders on May 26, 2017 and was sen­tenced to sev­en con­sec­u­tive life sen­tences, plus 60 addi­tion­al years for the kid­nap­ping and sex­u­al assault of sur­viv­ing vic­tim Kala Brown. Kohlhepp made a deal with pros­e­cu­tors to avoid the death penal­ty, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion that solved four mur­ders at a motor­cy­cle store in 2003 and spar­ing Brown and the fam­i­lies of the mur­der vic­tims from endur­ing a lengthy tri­al and appeals…