Publications & Testimony

Companion reports released on March 7 by the National Registry of Exonerations found record num­bers of exon­er­a­tions and wrong­ful con­vic­tions involv­ing offi­cial mis­con­duct in 2016, and strik­ing evi­dence of racial bias both in the wrong­ful con­vic­tions them­selves and in the time it took the judi­cial process to exon­er­ate the wrong­ful­ly incar­cer­at­ed. The Registry’s report, Exonerations in 2016, found a record 166 exon­er­a­tions in 2016, with 54 defen­dants exonerated of…

A Wake County, North Carolina jury vot­ed to spare Nathan Holden​’s life on March 3, mark­ing the eighth con­sec­u­tive cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing tri­al in the coun­ty in which juries had opt­ed to sen­tence a defen­dant to life with­out parole instead of the death penal­ty. No jury in Wake County has imposed a death sen­tence since 2007. Prosecutors had sought the death penal­ty against Holden for mur­der­ing his ex-wife’s par­ents and attempt­ing to kill her. The…

As the Florida leg­is­la­ture con­sid­ers a bill that would change Florida’s ​“Clean Hands” pol­i­cy, which denies com­pen­sa­tion for wrong­ful con­vic­tions if the defen­dant had a pri­or felony record, Alabama law­mak­ers are decid­ing whether to grant com­pen­sa­tion to Anthony Ray Hinton (pic­tured), who was exon­er­at­ed in 2015 after spend­ing near­ly 30 years on death row. In Florida, death row exoneree Herman Lindsey told the Senate Criminal Justice Committee about his having…

Texas cap­i­tal mur­der exoneree Christopher Scott (pic­tured) has urged Dallas County’s new District Attorney, Faith Johnson, to drop the death penal­ty from mur­der charges pend­ing against Erbie Bowser. Bowser, who is black, is a seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill Marine vet­er­an who was dis­charged from mil­i­tary ser­vice after hav­ing been diag­nosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He faces four cap­i­tal charges in the killings of his…

The costs of the death penal­ty are more than finan­cial, they are emo­tion­al; and these effects are felt not just by the par­ties to the tri­al and the fam­i­lies of vic­tims and defen­dants, but by the jurors as well. A recent report in the Akron Beacon Journal describes the trau­mat­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal impact serv­ing in the Summit County, Ohio death penal­ty tri­al of Eric Hendon had on the jurors in that case. After a three-month tri­al and capital-sentencing…

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed orders on February 27 for an unprece­dent­ed eight exe­cu­tions to be car­ried out over a peri­od of eleven days in April. The sched­uled dates for the four sets of dou­ble exe­cu­tions are: April 17, Bruce Ward and Don Davis; April 20, Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee; April 24, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams; and April 27, Kenneth…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit over­turned the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Andrew Lee Thomas, Jr. on February 24, rul­ing that Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly with­held evi­dence that a key pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness had been paid for her coop­er­a­tion in the case and then elicit­ed per­jured tes­ti­mo­ny from the wit­ness lying about the payment.

Human Rights Magazine, a quar­ter­ly pub­li­ca­tion by the American Bar Association, focused its first-quar­ter 2017 edi­tion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, mark­ing the 40^th anniver­sary of Gregg v. Georgia. Articles by nation­al­ly-renowned death penal­ty experts exam­ine geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in death sen­tences, secre­cy and lethal injec­tion, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, men­tal ill­ness, and oth­er crit­i­cal ques­tions in the cur­rent dis­course around the death penal­ty. In the intro­duc­tion to the…

In an expan­sion of their stance oppos­ing nurse par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions, the American Nurses Association (ANA) announced on February 21, 2017 that the orga­ni­za­tion now for the first time oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment itself. ​“Capital pun­ish­ment is a human rights vio­la­tion, and ANA is proud to stand in strong oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty,” ANA President Pamela F. Cipriano said. ​“All human beings, regard­less of their crimes, should be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty. For those states where capital…