Publications & Testimony

At a December 6 – 7 nation­al sum­mit on severe men­tal ill­ness and the death penal­ty, the American Bar Association Death Penalty Due Process Review Project released a new white paper that it hopes will pro­vide law mak­ers with infor­ma­tion and pol­i­cy analy­sis to ​“help states pass laws that will estab­lish clear stan­dards and process­es to pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of those with severe men­tal ill­ness.” The ABA does not take a posi­tion on the death penal­ty itself, but believes that…

Alabama is set to exe­cute Ronald Smith on December 8, although the sen­tenc­ing jury in his case rec­om­mend­ed that he be sen­tenced to life. Under a prac­tice that is no longer per­mit­ted in any oth­er state, Smith’s judge over­rode the jury’s sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion and imposed a death sen­tence. As his exe­cu­tion approach­es, Smith has filed a peti­tion in the U.S. Supreme chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Alabama’s law. He argues it vio­lates both his right to…

UPDATE: The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Sallie’s request for clemen­cy. PREVIOUSLY: Georgia plans to exe­cute William Sallie (pic­tured) on December 6 in a case his attor­neys argue is taint­ed by egre­gious juror mis­con­duct that no court has con­sid­ered because Sallie missed a fil­ing dead­line dur­ing a peri­od in which he was unrep­re­sent­ed and Georgia pro­vid­ed him no right to a lawyer. It is a case that Andrew Cohen, a Fellow at the…

With 55 exe­cu­tions since the 1970s, Dallas County, Texas, ranks sec­ond among all U.S. coun­ties — behind only Harris County (Houston), Texas — in the num­ber of pris­on­ers it has put to death. It is also among the 2% of coun­ties that account for more than half of all pris­on­ers on death row across the coun­try, and pro­duced sev­en new death sen­tences and one resen­tence between 2010 and 2015, more than 99.5% of all U.S. coun­ties during that…

Federal cap­i­tal defen­dants are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly sen­tenced to death in Missouri com­pared to oth­er states, with 14.5% of the 62 pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on fed­er­al death row hav­ing been pros­e­cut­ed in Missouri’s fed­er­al dis­trict courts. By con­trast, a DPIC analy­sis of FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics shows that Missouri account­ed for only 2.26% of mur­ders in the United States between 1988, when the cur­rent fed­er­al death penal­ty statute was adopt­ed, and 2012. Not surprisingly,…

During argu­ment November 29 in the case of Moore v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court expressed skep­ti­cism about Texas’ idio­syn­crat­ic method of decid­ing whether a cap­i­tal defen­dant has Intellectual Disability and is there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. A tri­al court, apply­ing the cri­te­ria for Intellectual Disability estab­lished by the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty, found that Bobby James Moore (pic­tured) was not sub­ject to the death penalty.

On November 23, the Florida Supreme Court over­turned the death sen­tence imposed by a judge on Richard Franklin after his jury split 9 – 3 in rec­om­mend­ing he receive the death penal­ty for a 2012 mur­der. ​“In light of the non-unan­i­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tion to impose a death sen­tence,” the court found that the death sen­tence vio­lat­ed Franklin’s right to have a unan­i­mous jury deter­mi­na­tion of all facts nec­es­sary to impose a death penal­ty and that the violation could…

U.S. District Court Judge Richard M. Gergel grant­ed a request on November 28 from Dylann Roof (pic­tured), the 22-year-old charged with the mur­ders of nine mem­bers of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, to rep­re­sent him­self in his fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­al. Judge Gergel described Roof’s deci­sion as ​“strate­gi­cal­ly unwise,” but said, ​“It is a deci­sion you have the right to make.” A crim­i­nal defen­dan­t’s right to self-representation was…

Timothy Shriver (pic­tured), the Chairman of the Special Olympics, has called on the U.S. Supreme Court to end Texas’ ​“use of stig­ma­tiz­ing stereo­types” in deter­min­ing whether a defen­dant has Intellectual Disability and is there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. On November 29, the Court will hear argu­ment in Moore v. Texas, a case chal­leng­ing Texas’ use of the ​“Briseño fac­tors” — a set of unsci­en­tif­ic cri­te­ria based in part…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has upheld a fed­er­al dis­trict court’s deci­sion order­ing a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing for Johnny Bennett, a black man who was sen­tenced to death by an all-white South Carolina jury in a tri­al taint­ed by a pros­e­cu­tor’s racial­ly-inflam­ma­to­ry cross-examination and…