Publications & Testimony

In an election viewed as a referendum on racial justice and criminal justice reform, death-penalty opponent Wesley Bell (pictured, left) soundly defeated seven-term incumbent, Robert McCulloch (pictured, right) for the Democratic nomination for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney. With no Republican opposition in the general election, Bell, a Ferguson, Missouri, city council member, is expected to become the county’s first African-American chief prosecutor. The election was the first time…

Two servicemen — one a former airman on the U.S. military death row, another a decorated Vietnam veteran sentenced to death in Pennsylvania — have won relief from their capital convictions or death sentences. On August 1, 2018, the La Crosse Tribune reported that an Air Force court martial jury had imposed a life sentence on senior airman Andrew Witt (pictured, left) following a three-week capital resentencing trial. The verdict in Witt’s case came two years after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled on July 27, 2018 that Christopher S. McDaniel (pictured), an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News, may proceed with his lawsuit challenging the Missouri Department of Corrections’s policy for selecting execution witnesses. McDaniel, who has written numerous articles exposing irregularities in Missouri’s execution procedures, applied to the Director of the Department of Corrections in 2014 to witness executions in Missouri, stating in…

A federal district court has vacated the murder conviction of Arizona death-row prisoner Barry Jones (pictured) in the death of 4‑year-old Rachel Gray, and has ordered the state to immediately retry or release Jones. On July 31, 2018, U.S. District Judge Timothy Burgess granted a new trial to Jones, who has spent 23 years on Arizona’s death row, finding that if Jones had been competently represented at trial, ​“there is a reasonable probability that his jury would not have convicted him of any…

Pope Francis (pictured) has formally changed the official Catholic Church teaching on the death penalty, calling capital punishment ​“an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and deeming it ​“inadmissible” in all cases. The Vatican’s August 2, 2018 announcement that it had revised its Catechism — the Church’s official compilation of teachings on a wide range of issues — to unambiguously oppose capital punishment also committed the Church to work ​“with determination” to abolish the…

On August 2, 2018, the Vatican announced that it had formally changed the official Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty, calling capital punishment ​“an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and deeming it ​“inadmissible” in all cases. The Catechism — the Catholic Church’s official compilation of teachings on a wide range of issues — was revised to unambiguously oppose capital punishment. The new version of Catechism No. 2267 also committed the Church to work ​“with…

The latest edition of Discussions with DPIC features H.E. Miller, Jr. and Bradley MacLean, co-authors of a recent study on the application of Tennessee’s death penalty. Miller and MacLean describe the findings from their article, Tennessee’s Death Penalty Lottery, in which they examined the factors that influence death-penalty decisions in the state. Based on their survey of thirty years of homicide cases, they found that whether a death sentence is imposed is influenced far less by the…

Cert. granted: September 28, 2017 Argument: January 17, 2018 Decided: May 14, 2018 In a 6 – 3 ruling with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writing for the majority, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Louisiana death-row prisoner Robert McCoy (pictured), granting him a new trial and finding counsel’s concession of guilt violated McCoy’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel. In August 2011, McCoy was convicted in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in…

Michael Graczyk (pictured), who witnessed more than 400 executions as an Associated Press reporter in Texas, has retired after nearly 46 years with the news service. On March 14, 1984, Texas executed James Autry — the second person put to death in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state’s capital punishment statute in 1976. According to a non-exhaustive list of execution witnesses maintained by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, it was the first of at least 429 executions…

Calling the death penalty a wasteful ​“big government” policy that is ​“inept, biased, and corrupt,” a libertarian think tank and a New Orleans columnist have joined the chorus of conservative voices calling for the end of the death penalty. In Conservative doesn’t mean supporting death penalty, New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Tim Morris (pictured) argues that being a conservative requires neither ​“an unyielding fealty to a party or person [or] simply finding the polar opposite of some…