Publications & Testimony

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…

At the urging of the victim’s family, Rapid City, South Dakota prosecutors have withdrawn their request for the death penalty against two murder defendants in the only capital trials pending in the state. On April 16, Pennington County State’s Attorney Mark Vargo withdrew the state’s notice of intent to seek the death penalty against Jonathon Klinetobein — charged with arranging the May 2015 murder-for-hire of his ex-girlfriend, Jessica Rehfeld — after her father, Michael Rehfeld told the court the…

Death row is aging and increasingly infirm and, as a series of recent death warrants suggest, that phenomenon is raising legal, practical, and humanitarian concerns. One year after executing 75-year-old Thomas Arthur, Alabama on April 19 executed 83-year-old Walter Moody (pictured, left), the oldest person and only octogenarian put to death in the United States since executions resumed in 1977. Attempts to execute prisoners debilitated by physical and cognitive impairments exacerbated by aging…

In 1764, Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria wrote the treatise, Dei delitti e delle pene, which author John Bessler (pictured) says spawned global movements for fair and proportional punishment and against practices such as torture and the death penalty. Beccaria’s book was a best-seller that swept across Europe and, translated into English in 1767 as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, into the American colonies, shaping the beliefs of America’s founding fathers, and influencing leaders…

Mexican national Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pictured), wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Kern County, California for supposedly raping, sodomizing, and murdering his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter, will soon be freed after nearly 26 years on death row. He will be the 162^nd person and fifth foreign national exonerated from a U.S. death row since 1973. In a media advisory on April 17, 2018, Kern District Attorney Lisa Green announced on April 17, 2018 that her office would be…

As the sister of a murder victim and the wife of a death-row exoneree, LaShawn Ajamu has a unique perspective on what victims’ families need and how they are treated as criminal cases wend their way through the legal process. And the co-chair of the Murder Victims Families Support Project at Ohioans to Stop Executions strongly believes that the death penalty fails victims’ family members. Ajamu, the wife of 150^th U.S. death-row exoneree Kwame Ajamu, spoke in London, England on April 7 at a…