Publications & Testimony

Finding that prosecutors withheld evidence that the family of murder victim Jonas Cherry opposed the death penalty for his accused killer and then lied to jurors that Cherry’s family supported the death penalty, a trial judge in Tarrant County, Texas has recommended overturning the death sentence imposed on Paul David Storey (pictured) and replacing it with a sentence of life without parole. Storey was convicted and sentenced to death in 2008 for murdering Cherry during a 2006 robbery of a…

The nation’s death rows continue to shrink more rapidly than new defendants are being sentenced to death, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) statistical brief, “Capital Punishment, 2016,” released April 30, 2018. (Click image to enlarge.) The statistical brief, which analyzes information on those under sentence of death in the United States as of December 31, 2016, contains official government figures documenting continuing declines in executions, new death sentences, and…

As legislators and the media have pressed Nebraska for information on its secretive execution practices, the executive branch has responded — the state’s leading newspapers say — with obfuscation and with a lawsuit that has created a state constitutional crisis. After adopting a new execution policy that the Lincoln Journal Star reported “was written in a single draft without input from the governor, attorney general, Corrections director, outside experts or other state officials,” the state…

In 2005, Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured left) was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a Houston, Texas police officer based on false testimony Harris County prosecutors obtained through coercion and threats. After spending a decade on death row for a crime he did not commit, Brown was finally released with the help of his attorney Brian Stolarz (pictured right), who is the guest on DPIC’s latest podcast and author of Grace and Justice on Death Row, a book about Brown’s…

The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles has halted the execution of Robert Earl Butts, Jr. (pictured), less than 24 hours before the state intended to put him to death. On May 2, the Board stayed Butts’s execution for up to 90 days, saying it needed additional time “to examine the substance of the claims offered in support of the application.” In a news release accompanying the issuance of the stay, the Board said it had received a “considerable amount of additional information …

In an April 27 editorial, the Los Angeles Times said the death penalty should come to an end and the recent exoneration of California death-row prisoner Vicente Benavides Figueroa illustrates why. Benavides — an intellectually disabled Mexican national who was working as a seasonal farm worker — spent more than 25 years on death row after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death on charges of raping, sodomizing, and murdering his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter. His conviction…

Six detainees charged with capital crimes are currently being held at the U.S. Naval Base military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Much of the information relating to these cases is classified and all the participants in the cases — prosecutors, defense lawyers, and court personnel — are required to have top secret security clearance. As a result, significant portions of the proceedings — including court motions and decisions — are heavily redacted or kept secret from the public. In addition, the cases…

The April 2018 exoneration of Vicente Benavides Figueroa, wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death on charges of raping, sodomizing, and murdering his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter, illustrates why the death penalty should be abolished, the Los Angeles Times said in an April 27, 2018 editorial. Benavides — an intellectually disabled Mexican national who was working as a seasonal farm worker — was sentenced to death after medical witnesses had been provided incomplete hospital records…

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted review in the case of Missouri death-row prisoner Russell Bucklew, who has argued that the severe form of a rare congenital disorder from which he suffers makes it unconstitutionally cruel for him to be executed by lethal injection. Bucklew has an extreme form of cavernous hemangioma, a malformation of his blood vessels that causes blood-filled tumors to grow in his head, neck, and throat. The tumors, he has argued, are likely to rupture during the…

The New Hampshire state legislature has voted to repeal the state’s death penalty, but proponents of the bill currently lack the votes necessary to overcome a threatened gubernatorial veto. On April 26, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted 223 – 116 to pass Senate Bill 593, with 145 Democrats, 77 Republicans, and one Libertarian supporting repeal. The state senate previously approved the measure 14 – 10 on March 15, with support from eight Democrats and six Republicans. “What you’ve…