Publications & Testimony

Lawyers for Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, the man accused of plot­ting the bomb­ing of the USS Cole in 2000, are seek­ing U.S. Supreme Court inter­ven­tion to pre­vent his tri­al before a mil­i­tary tri­bunal in which Nashiri faces the death penal­ty if con­vict­ed. The peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari asks the Court to allow Nashiri’s lawyers to chal­lenge his mil­i­tary deten­tion — and efforts to try him in a mil­i­tary tri­bunal rather than a civilian…

A fea­ture sto­ry in the March issue of Harper’s Magazine explores the grow­ing con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment against the death penal­ty, with a focus on the group Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty and its nation­al advo­ca­cy coor­di­na­tor, Marc Hyden (pic­tured). Hyden, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked on Republican cam­paigns and was a field rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the NRA, explained the gen­e­sis of his views against the death penal­ty. His…

After prison per­son­nel took more than a half hour to set the IV line dur­ing Virginia​’s January 18 exe­cu­tion of Ricky Gray, the Commonwealth’s Department of Corrections has changed its exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures to con­duct more of the exe­cu­tion prepa­ra­tions out of…

Saying that pur­su­ing the death penal­ty​“is not in the best inter­ests of this com­mu­ni­ty or in the best inter­ests of jus­tice,” Orange-Osceola County, Florida State Attorney Aramis Ayala (pic­tured) announced on March 16 that her office would not seek the death penal­ty while she is…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on March 15 that Alabama death-row pris­on­er Vernon Madison (pic­tured) — who was spared exe­cu­tion last May when the U.S. Supreme Court dead­locked at 4 – 4 on whether to lift a stay — is not mentally competent…

Prosecutorial mis­con­duct, includ­ing with­hold­ing evi­dence favor­able to the defense, is the most com­mon cause of wrong­ful con­vic­tions in death penal­ty cas­es, but pros­e­cu­tors fre­quent­ly fail to dis­close this evi­dence, nar­row­ly inter­pret­ing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1963 deci­sion in Brady v. Maryland call­ing for its dis­clo­sure. On March 29, the Court will hear two con­sol­i­dat­ed cas­es—Turner v. United States and Overton v. United…

A study pub­lished in The Yale Law Journal pro­vides new evi­dence that, as pub­lic opin­ion con­tin­ues to shift away from the death penal­ty, juries empan­eled in cap­i­tal cas­es may become even less rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the com­mu­ni­ty and even more prone to con­vict. The study—con­duct­ed by Professors Brandon Garrett (University of Virginia), Daniel Krauss (Claremont-McKenna College), and Nicholas Scurich (University of California Irvine) — found that with increased…

As U.S. phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies have removed med­i­cines from the mar­ket to pre­vent states from obtain­ing them for exe­cu­tions, states have turned to alter­na­tives, like the seda­tive mida­zo­lam. Dr. Armin Walser, who was part of the team that invent­ed the drug in the 1970s, is dis­mayed at that devel­op­ment.​“I didn’t make it for the pur­pose” of exe­cut­ing pris­on­ers, Dr. Walser told The New York Times.​“I am not a friend of the death…

A Florida bill that would require the jury to make a unan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tion for death before a judge may impose a death sen­tence will head to Governor Rick Scott for final approval, after both hous­es of the Florida leg­is­la­ture passed it by over­whelm­ing mar­gins. Senate Bill 280 passed unan­i­mous­ly (37 – 0) on March 9, and the cor­re­spond­ing House Bill 527 passed by a 112 – 3 vote…

In a new arti­cle for the Lewis & Clark Law Review, author Carla Edmondson argues that the future dan­ger­ous­ness inquiry that is implic­it in cap­i­tal setenc­ing deter­mi­na­tions​“is a fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed ques­tion that leads to arbi­trary and capri­cious death sen­tences” and because of the​“per­sis­tent influ­ence of future dan­ger­ous­ness … ren­ders the death penal­ty incom­pat­i­ble with the pro­hi­bi­tions of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments on cruel and…