Publications & Testimony

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…

Los Angeles County, California is the home of the nation’s largest death row, one that sta­tis­tics show con­tin­ues to rapid­ly grow. In January 2013, Los Angeles was respon­si­ble for more death row pris­on­ers than any oth­er coun­ty in the United States, and it has ranked as one of the two most pro­lif­ic coun­ties in impos­ing new death sen­tences each year since. The 31 death sen­tences imposed in the coun­ty between 2010 and 2015 are more than any oth­er U.S. county…

In 1986, California vot­ers removed Rose Bird, the state’s first female supreme court chief jus­tice, from office after con­ser­v­a­tive groups spent more than $10 mil­lion in a recall effort that por­trayed her as ​“soft on crime,” empha­siz­ing her court opin­ions over­turn­ing death sen­tences that had been uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly imposed. Ten years lat­er, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Penny White lost a reten­tion elec­tion after death penal­ty pro­po­nents and other…

The Louisiana Supreme Court has over­turned the con­vic­tion of Rodricus Crawford (pic­tured) and ordered that he be giv­en a new tri­al in a con­tro­ver­sial death penal­ty case that attract­ed nation­al atten­tion amid evi­dence of race dis­crim­i­na­tion, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al excess, and actual…

A new study by Lewis & Clark Law School and Seattle University that exam­ined the costs of hun­dreds of aggra­vat­ed mur­der and mur­der cas­es in Oregon has con­clud­ed that ​“main­tain­ing the death penal­ty incurs a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial bur­den on Oregon tax­pay­ers.” The researchers found that the aver­age tri­al and incar­cer­a­tion costs of an Oregon mur­der case that results in a death penal­ty are almost dou­ble those in a mur­der case that results in a sen­tence of life impris­on­ment or a…