Publications & Testimony

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…

On April 26, 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) opened the Memorial for Peace and Justice and its accompanying Legacy Museum, which tell the stories of the more than 4,000 men, women, and children killed by racial terror lynchings in the century following the Civil War, and trace the connections between slavery, segregation, capital punishment, and mass incarceration. The opening drew thousands of visitors from across the country, theatrical headliners, and a host of civil rights…

In Pennsylvania, death-row prisoners whose convictions or death sentences are overturned in state or federal post-conviction appeals are almost never resentenced to death, a new Death Penalty Information Center study has revealed. Since Pennsylvania adopted its current death-penalty statute in September 1978, post-conviction courts have reversed prisoners’ capital convictions or death sentences in 170 cases. Defendants have faced capital retrials or resentencings in 137 of those cases, and 133…

Three powerful new documentaries that explore the modern death penalty in the United States are set to premiere this April. Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis and Julius Tennon are executive producers of The Last Defense, a new documentary series premiering for the first time at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival on April 27. The seven-episode documentary series exposes flaws in the U.S. justice system through the personal narratives of death row prisoners Darlie Routier and Julius Jones, both whom…

In a decision most significant for what it declined to do, the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed efforts by state prosecutors to further limit the scope of federal habeas corpus review of state criminal cases. In a 6 – 3 vote with Justice Breyer writing for the majority, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Georgia death-row prisoner Marion Wilson (pictured), saying that he was entitled to federal-court review of the reasons why the Georgia state courts had rejected his claim that he had been…