Publications & Testimony

Bills to exempt indi­vid­u­als with severe men­tal ill­ness from fac­ing the death penal­ty are expect­ed in at least sev­en states in 2017. Legislators in Idaho, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia have either intro­duced such leg­is­la­tion or announced that they plan to. Six of the sev­en states have spon­sor­ship from Republican leg­is­la­tors, indicating…

A Texas fed­er­al appeals court has upheld the rul­ing by a U.S. dis­trict court judge to stay the exe­cu­tion of John Henry Ramirez, who had been sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on February 2. The District Court had ruled that Ramirez was enti­tled to a stay so new lawyers could seek clemen­cy on his behalf after Michael Gross, the lawyer ini­tial­ly appoint­ed to rep­re­sent Ramirez in his state and fed­er­al habeas cor­pus pro­ceed­ings, had failed to…

Prosecutors in Augusta, Georgia are seek­ing the death penal­ty against a man accused of mur­der­ing the Rev. Rene Robert (pic­tured), despite their knowl­edge that the Franciscan priest had request­ed that the death penal­ty not be used ​“under any cir­cum­stances” if he were killed. On January 31, Catholic Bishops from Georgia and Florida trav­eled to Augusta to meet with Hank Sims, the acting district…

A BuzzFeed News inves­ti­ga­tion reports that Texas sought to import exe­cu­tion drugs from a sup­pli­er in India that the Indian Narcotics Control Bureau shut down for alleged­ly sell­ing psy­chotrop­ic drugs and opi­oids ille­gal­ly to cus­tomers in the United States and…

Missouri plans to exe­cute Mark Christeson (pic­tured) on January 31, with­out his case ever receiv­ing sub­stan­tive review in a federal…

A new study reports that at least 201 Florida death row pris­on­ers — includ­ing at least 134 whom judges sen­tenced to death after juries had returned non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions — may be eli­gi­ble for resen­tenc­ing hear­ings as a result of recent rul­ings by the United States and Florida Supreme Courts declar­ing the state’s death sentencing practices…

After receiv­ing evi­dence dur­ing a five-day hear­ing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael R. Merz ruled on January 26 that Ohio’s lethal injec­tion process will cre­ate a sub­stan­tial and objec­tive­ly intol­er­a­ble risk of seri­ous harm in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. Based on that rul­ing, the court issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion stay­ing the exe­cu­tions of Ronald Phillips, Raymond Tibbetts, and Gary Otte. Ohio has not conducted an…

Alleging wrong­ful pros­e­cu­tion, Texas death row pris­on­er Terry Edwards (pic­tured), who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 26, is seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present new evi­dence that his case was taint­ed by racial­ly-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, and false and mis­lead­ing foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. Edwards was pros­e­cut­ed by Dallas County assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney Thomas D’Amore, who, the defense says, was lead…

Lethal injec­tion as prac­ticed in U.S. exe­cu­tions ​“is an imper­son­ation of med­i­cine pop­u­lat­ed by real doc­tors who don’t acknowl­edge the decep­tion,” Dr. Joel Zivot (pic­tured), an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of anes­the­si­ol­o­gy at Emory University School of Medicine, writes in an op-ed for CNN. Setting aside the ques­tion of the right­ness or wrong­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment itself, he says, ​“it’s time to reject lethal injec­tion” as the method of…

A Texas Court of Appeals ruled on January 19, 2017 that all charges against Jerry Hartfield should be dis­missed with prej­u­dice after the state had kept the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled for­mer death row pris­on­er in prison for 32 years with­out retry­ing him after his con­vic­tion had been over­turned. Calling the sit­u­a­tion a ​“crim­i­nal judi­cial night­mare,” the court ruled that the three-decade delay in try­ing Hartfield vio­lat­ed his con­sti­tu­tion­al right to a speedy trial.