Publications & Testimony

Orange County, California imposed nine death sen­tences between 2010 and 2015, more than 99.8% of American coun­ties, and rank­ing it among the 6 most pro­lif­ic death-sen­tenc­ing coun­ties in the coun­try dur­ing that…

The United Nations General Assembly vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly on December 20 to adopt a res­o­lu­tion co-spon­sored by 89 coun­tries urg­ing a world­wide mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty. 117 nations vot­ed in sup­port of the world body’s sixth res­o­lu­tion on the sub­ject, equal­ing the record num­ber of coun­tries who sup­port­ed a UN mora­to­ri­um res­o­lu­tion in 2014. 40 mem­ber nations, includ­ing the United States, vot­ed against the mea­sure, while 31 abstained. The res­o­lu­tion also called upon all…

Most of the pris­on­ers on Oregon​’s death row suf­fer from sig­nif­i­cant men­tal impair­ments, accord­ing a study released on December 20, 2016 by the Fair Punishment Project at Harvard University. The Project’s analy­sis of case records, media reports, and opin­ions of Oregon legal experts found that two-thirds of the 35 peo­ple on the state’s death row ​“pos­sess signs of seri­ous men­tal ill­ness or intel­lec­tu­al impair­ment, endured dev­as­tat­ing­ly severe child­hood trauma,…

More than 200 Florida death row pris­on­ers may have their death sen­tences over­turned, while more than 150 oth­ers who may have been uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death will not, as a result of two lengthy opin­ions issued by the Florida Supreme Court on December 22. The rul­ings in the cas­es of Asay v. State and Mosley v. State would enti­tle death row pris­on­ers whose uncon­sti­tu­tion­al death sen­tences became ​“final” in or after 2002 to have…

Death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty con­tin­ued their his­toric declines in 2016, accord­ing to DPIC’s annu­al report, ​“The Death Penalty in 2016: Year End Report,” released on December 21. The 30 death sen­tences imposed this year are the fewest in the mod­ern era of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. — since the Supreme Court declared all exist­ing death penal­ty statutes uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1972 — and declined 39% from 2015’s already 40-year low. Just 20…

A fed­er­al jury award­ed $22 mil­lion in dam­ages to Nathson Fields (pic­tured), who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of a gang-relat­ed mur­der and sen­tenced to death in 1986. Fields was exon­er­at­ed in 2009. The jury found that two Chicago police detec­tives vio­lat­ed Fields’ civ­il rights by hid­ing crit­i­cal evi­dence that sug­gest­ed he did not com­mit the crime of which he was con­vict­ed. For many years, the Chicago police depart­ment main­tained a prac­tice of keep­ing secret ​“street files” on…

Directed by the U.S. Supreme Court to recon­sid­er its rul­ings uphold­ing the death sen­tences imposed upon four Alabama defen­dants, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed three of the death sen­tences on December 16. The state court ruled that the death sen­tences imposed upon Ronnie Kirksey, Corey Wimbley, and Ryan Gerald Russell do not vio­late the Supreme Court’s January 16, 2016 deci­sion in…

On December 15, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled in Powell v. State that death-row pris­on­er Derrick Powell will get the ben­e­fit of its August 2016 deci­sion in Rauf v. State declar­ing Delaware’s death sen­tenc­ing statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The court direct­ed that Powell be resen­tenced to life with­out parole, in a rul­ing that also paves the way for resen­tenc­ing Delaware’s twelve oth­er death row pris­on­ers to…

Juan Cartagena (pic­tured), President and General Counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF (for­mer­ly the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund), says there is ​“a grow­ing under­stand­ing” among Latinos in Florida and across the coun­try ​“that the death penal­ty is bro­ken and it can’t be fixed.” In an op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel, Cartagena explains the rea­sons for Latino oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, espe­cial­ly in Florida, which has a large Latino pop­u­la­tion and is home to…

After a two-week long ​“exten­sive hear­ing regard­ing the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty and arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty sys­tem, the exces­sive delay involved in exe­cu­tions, and the grow­ing decline in the use of the death penal­ty,” U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford (pic­tured) ruled in the case of U.S. v. Donald Fell that the Federal Death Penalty Act (“FDPA”) ​“falls short of the [con­sti­tu­tion­al] stan­dard … for iden­ti­fy­ing defen­dants who meet…