Publications & Testimony

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.

Isaiah McCoy (pic­tured), a for­mer Delaware death row inmate, was exon­er­at­ed on January 19, 2017, when a judge acquit­ted him at a retri­al. He is the 157^th per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row in the United States, the first in 2017, and the first in…

Inspired by the case of Robin ​“Rocky” Myers (pic­tured), an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and pos­si­bly inno­cent Alabama death row pris­on­er whom an elect­ed state judge sen­tenced to death despite a 9 – 3 jury rec­om­men­da­tion for life, a pan­el of faith lead­ers gath­ered in Montgomery, Alabama to dis­cuss reli­gious views on the death penal­ty and the inter­sec­tion of faith and jus­tice. Before the dis­cus­sion began, the faith lead­ers and the audi­ence viewed a…

On January 17, 2017, President Barack Obama (pic­tured) com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of Abelardo Arboleda Ortiz, a fed­er­al death row pris­on­er, and Dwight Loving, a mil­i­tary death row pris­on­er. The two men were among 209 com­mu­ta­tions and 64 par­dons announced by the White House on the 17^th. Ortiz’s lawyers sought clemen­cy from the President on the grounds that Ortiz was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, his right to con­sular noti­fi­ca­tion under the Vienna…

With the sup­port of a bipar­ti­san group of state offi­cials and leg­is­la­tors, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson (pic­tured) and Governor Jay Inslee have pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to repeal the state’s death penal­ty and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. At a news con­fer­ence announc­ing the bill, Ferguson, a Democrat, was joined by for­mer Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, in call­ing for abo­li­tion. The bill will be…

Ricky Gray (pic­tured), who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on January 18, is seek­ing clemen­cy from Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, and his clemen­cy peti­tion has been joined by a diverse group of men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als and the Virginia Catholic Conference. A let­ter signed by more than 50 men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, includ­ing two for­mer com­mis­sion­ers of the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, urges McAuliffe to commute…

Nearly two-thirds of death row pris­on­ers in five Florida coun­ties whose cas­es were stud­ied by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project suf­fer from seri­ous men­tal impair­ments. According to a report released by the project on January 12, 2017, the Florida Supreme Court’s December 2016 rul­ing in Mosley v. State requires recon­sid­er­a­tion of the sen­tences imposed on approx­i­mate­ly 150 peo­ple on Florida’s death row who were sen­tenced to death after the…