Publications & Testimony

Three Louisiana leg­is­la­tors, all of them for­mer law enforce­ment offi­cials, have pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty. Sen. Dan Claitor (R‑Baton Rouge, pic­tured), a for­mer New Orleans pros­e­cu­tor who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is the pri­ma­ry author of Senate Bill 142, which would elim­i­nate the death penal­ty for offens­es com­mit­ted on or after August 1, 2017. The bil­l’s coun­ter­part in the House of Representatives, House Bill 101, is sponsored by…

Executions world­wide fell by 37% in 2016, accord­ing to the annu­al Amnesty International Global Report on Death Sentences and Executions, released on April 11,…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has issued an order stay­ing the sched­uled April 12 exe­cu­tion of Paul Storey. The unpub­lished April 7 order sends Storey’s case back to the tri­al court to con­sid­er whether the pros­e­cu­tion know­ing­ly pre­sent­ed false evi­dence about the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly’s views on the death…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has upheld a low­er fed­er­al court rul­ing block­ing the state of Ohio from pro­ceed­ing with plans to car­ry out exe­cu­tions with its new three-drug exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The deci­sion affirmed a dis­trict court pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion that barred the state from using the drug mida­zo­lam as part of a three-drug exe­cu­tion process, and barred the state from using ​“any lethal injec­tion method which employs either a par­a­lyt­ic agent…or…

The Arkansas Parole Board vot­ed 6 – 1 on April 5 to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for Jason McGehee, one of the eight death-row pris­on­ers sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in an unprece­dent­ed eleven-day peri­od lat­er this month. McGehee’s clemen­cy peti­tion drew sup­port from both the for­mer Director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, Ray Hobbs, and the tri­al judge who presided in his case, Robert McCorkindale. Speaking on McGehee’s behalf, Hobbs told the…

The Alabama leg­is­la­ture has approved and sent to the Governor a bill that would bring to an end the prac­tice of per­mit­ting tri­al judges to impose death sen­tences over a cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion that the defen­dant be sen­tenced to life. Alabama is the only state in the U.S. that cur­rent­ly per­mits judi­cial over­ride. The leg­is­la­ture act­ed in response to mount­ing court chal­lenges to Alabama’s death penalty…

Florida Governor Rick Scott issued a series of exec­u­tive orders on April 3 remov­ing local­ly elect­ed 9^th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Aramis Ayala (pic­tured) from 21 first-degree mur­der cas­es and replac­ing her with 5^th Judicial Circuit State Attorney Brad King. The removal comes two weeks after Ayala announced a pol­i­cy that her office would not pur­sue the death penal­ty in mur­der pros­e­cu­tions. The cas­es include a num­ber of potential capital…

A new study of the case records of the men and women exe­cut­ed in the United States between 2000 and 2015 has found that 21^st-cen­tu­ry exe­cu­tions dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly involve pris­on­ers diag­nosed with men­tal ill­ness and who have expe­ri­enced traumatic child…

As Arkansas moves toward attempt­ing to con­duct an unprece­dent­ed eight exe­cu­tions in eleven days, for­mer cor­rec­tions offi­cials from across the coun­try are warn­ing Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson of the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll the com­pressed exe­cu­tion sched­ule could take on prison…

In a joint op-ed for The Washington Post, for­mer gov­er­nors Bob Taft (pic­tured, l.) and Joseph E. Kernan (pic­tured, r.) have expressed bipar­ti­san sup­port for pro­posed leg­is­la­tion that would pro­hib­it the use of the death penal­ty against peo­ple who have severe men­tal ill­ness. Taft, a for­mer Republican gov­er­nor of Ohio, and Kernan, a for­mer Democratic gov­er­nor of Indiana, call the exe­cu­tion of men­tal­ly ill defen­dants ​“an inhu­mane prac­tice that fails to respect com­mon stan­dards of decency…