Publications & Testimony

At a news conference on March 14, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh announced that the state plans to switch its method of execution from lethal injection to nitrogen gas asphyxiation. Attorney General Hunter said the move to nitrogen hypoxia was necessary ​“because of the well-documented fact that states across the country are struggling to find the proper drugs to perform executions by lethal injection.” ​“Oklahoma,” he said, ​“is no exception.” No…

The California Supreme Court has vacated the conviction of Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pictured), saying that the forensic evidence that sent the former Mexican farmworker to death row 25 years ago was ​“extensive,” ​“pervasive,” ​“impactful,” and ​“false.” Benavides, now 68, was sentenced to death in 1993 after being found guilty of brutally murdering Consuelo Verdugo, his girlfriend’s 21-month-old toddler, by raping and anally sodomizing her. However, the court said, medical evidence showed that…

The California Supreme Court has vacated the conviction of Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pictured), saying that the forensic evidence that sent the former Mexican farmworker to death row 25 years ago was ​“extensive,” ​“pervasive,” ​“impactful,” and ​“false.” Benavides, now 68, was sentenced to death in 1993 after being found guilty of brutally murdering Consuelo Verdugo, his girlfriend’s 21-month-old toddler, by raping and anally sodomizing her. However, the court said, medical evidence showed that…

Carlton Gary, a Georgia death-row prisoner scheduled for execution on March 15, is asking the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant him clemency on the basis of new and withheld evidence that undercuts the prosecution testimony against him and suggests he did not commit the crimes for which he was sentenced to death. Gary was convicted of raping and killing three women in the 1970s, in what prosecutors have claimed was part of a string of nine burglaries and rapes committed by a single…

“In 2016, at least 60 prisoners were exonerated after having been condemned to death, in countries across the geographical and political spectrum,” according to a new report on wrongful capital convictions by the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide. The report, Justice Denied: A Global Study of Wrongful Death Row Convictions, analyzes risk factors for executing the innocent that are endemic in death penalty cases irrespective of where they are tried, and makes recommendations for…

In Washington and Utah, bipartisan or Republican-led efforts at death-penalty repeal fell short, a month after death-penalty proponents abandoned efforts to reinstate capital punishment in New Mexico and Iowa. In Washington, a bipartisan push to replace the death penalty with life without possibility of release was introduced at the request of Democratic Attorney General Bob Ferguson with the support of his Republican predecessor Rob McKenna, Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, and King County…

Two former Pennsylvania death-row prisoners, whose death sentences were overturned by federal courts after the United States Supreme Court had ruled against them, have been resentenced to life without parole. On February 28, 2018, Scott Blystone (pictured) was resentenced to life by the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas in southwestern Pennsylvania, 34 years after being sentenced to death and 27 years after the U.S. Supreme Court heard his case. Two days later, on March 2, Joseph Kindler…

According to newly disclosed records, the Harris County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Texas death-row exoneree Alfred DeWayne Brown was aware of phone records that corroborated Brown’s assertion of innocence long before the case went to trial, but withheld the records from the defense and intimidated a witness who original testimony was supported by the records into falsely testifying against Brown. Brown was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for the murders of a Houston…

Alva Campbell (pictured), the terminally ill death-row prisoner who survived a botched execution attempt by the state of Ohio on November 15, 2017, has died. Campbell, 69, was afflicted with lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respiratory failure, prostate cancer, and severe pneumonia; he relied on a colostomy bag, needed oxygen treatments four times a day, and required a walker for even limited mobility. He was found unresponsive in his cell at Chillicothe Correctional…

The North Carolina Supreme Court announced on March 2 that it will hear appeals from three of the four prisoners whose death sentences were reduced to life without parole under the state’s Racial Justice Act, then reinstated after the legislature repealed the law. Passed in 2009 and repealed in 2013, the landmark legislation allowed death-row prisoners to challenge their sentences on the basis of statistical evidence of racial discrimination. Marcus Robinson (pictured), Quintel Augustine…