Publications & Testimony

In 1949, Norma Padgett, a white 17-year-old, false­ly accused four young black men in Groveland, Florida of kid­nap­ping and rap­ing her. Nearly 70 years lat­er, the state of Florida is apol­o­giz­ing to the fam­i­lies of the​“Groveland Four,” two of whom were mur­dered and two of whom were wrongly…

Two Arkansas death-row pris­on­ers who are sched­uled be exe­cut­ed on April 20 have asked the Arkansas courts to stay their exe­cu­tions to per­mit DNA test­ing in their cas­es. Stacey Johnson (pic­tured, l.) and Ledell Lee (pic­tured, r.) both say they did not com­mit the crimes for which they were sen­tenced to death, and both say that DNA test­ing meth­ods not avail­able at the time of…

Caddo Parish, Louisiana pros­e­cu­tors for­mal­ly dropped charges against Rodricus Crawford (pic­tured) on April 17, exon­er­at­ing him in a con­tro­ver­sial death penal­ty case that had attract­ed nation­al atten­tion amid evi­dence of race dis­crim­i­na­tion, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al excess, and actu­al inno­cence. He is the 158^th per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row in the United…

In legal chal­lenges filed sep­a­rate­ly by Arkansas death-row pris­on­ers and a com­pa­ny involved in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, the Arkansas state and fed­er­al courts issued pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tions putting on hold the state’s plan to car­ry out an unprece­dent­ed eight exe­cu­tions in the span…

Amid mount­ing con­cerns that Virginia may exe­cute an inno­cent man on April 25, a diverse group of reli­gious, polit­i­cal, and busi­ness lead­ers are call­ing on Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to grant clemen­cy to Ivan Teleguz (pic­tured). Their pleas for clemen­cy stress that Teleguz was con­vict­ed based upon high­ly unre­li­able tes­ti­mo­ny and sen­tenced to death based upon false tes­ti­mo­ny that he had been involved in…

In 1986, James McWilliams (pic­tured), an indi­gent defen­dant, was sen­tenced to death by a judge in Alabama after being denied access to an inde­pen­dent expert who could have helped the defense under­stand and present his men­tal health issues. On April 24, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court will hold oral argu­ment in McWilliams v. Dunn. The ques­tion before the Court is whether, when the Supreme Court held in Ake v. Oklahoma (1985) that an indi­gent defen­dant is entitled to…

A new poll of vot­ers in Orange and Osceola coun­ties in Florida — tak­en in the wake of Governor Rick Scott’s removal of their local­ly elect­ed State Attorney Aramis Ayala (pic­tured) from 22 homi­cide cas­es after she announced that her office would not pur­sue the death penal­ty — shows that the coun­ties’ vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly pre­fer the use of life impris­on­ment over the death penal­ty as pun­ish­ment for mur­der. The poll by Public Policy Polling, released on…

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…

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

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…