Publications & Testimony

Idaho U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has ruled in favor of death row pris­on­er Gerald Pizzuto, indef­i­nite­ly paus­ing his March 2023 exe­cu­tion date, and grant­i­ng him a hear­ing in his claim that the state of Idaho vio­lates his Constitutional right against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment by repeat­ed­ly sched­ul­ing exe­cu­tion dates while know­ing the state does not have the means to car­ry it out. ​“As Pizzuto describes it,” Judge Winmill wrote, ​“defen­dants’ repeat­ed resched­ul­ing of his exe­cu­tion is…

Charles Ogletree, Jr., a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for racial and crim­i­nal jus­tice, died on August 4, 2023, after a long ill­ness. As a tenured pro­fes­sor at Harvard University, Professor Ogletree spoke and wrote often about the death penal­ty and men­tored many stu­dents, includ­ing both Barack and Michelle Obama. In a 2014 Washington Post op-ed, he crit­i­cized the use of the death penal­ty in the United States, par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple with severe men­tal ill­ness, brain impair­ments, or who suf­fer from the…

Human rights advo­cates are crit­i­ciz­ing the Singapore government’s plan to exe­cute more death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of non-vio­lent drug offens­es. Singapore has so far hanged 16 peo­ple since resum­ing state exe­cu­tions in March last year, and all of those exe­cut­ed were low- to mid-lev­el drug offend­ers con­vict­ed of traf­fick­ing amounts of drugs that would cur­rent­ly result in rel­a­tive­ly small pun­ish­ments in the UK and US. There is wide­spread pub­lic sup­port for use of the death penal­ty as an…

Gary Tyler was just 16 years old when he was charged with shoot­ing a white stu­dent in 1974 and sen­tenced to death, a crime that, many wit­ness­es agree, he did not com­mit. Mr. Tyler, then a sopho­more in high school in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, was rid­ing a school bus that was attacked by a seg­re­ga­tion­ist mob. In the chaos, some­one fired a shot that killed a 13-year-old white boy, Timothy Weber. After Mr. Tyler, who is Black, spoke to one of the deputies, he was arrest­ed for allegedly…

On August 9^th, with the use of his exec­u­tive author­i­ty, Governor John Bel Edwards (pic­tured) asked the Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole to return the 56 clemen­cy appli­ca­tions filed by death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in Louisiana to its dock­et for con­sid­er­a­tion and set them for hear­ings. The Board of Pardons will now have until January 2024, when Gov. Edwards offi­cial­ly leaves office, to decide whether to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for near­ly all of the state’s death row pris­on­ers. Earlier this…

In light of the five-year anniver­sary of Ohio’s last exe­cu­tion, two op-eds high­light­ing dif­fer­ent views about the death penal­ty were pub­lished in the Dayton Daily News. On August 1, Louis Tobin (pic­tured right), Executive Director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, expressed his sup­port for the death penal­ty, and two days lat­er, Reverend Dr. Crystal Walker (pic­tured left), co-chair of Ohioans to Stop Executions, expressed her sup­port for alter­na­tives to the death penalty. …

UPDATE: On August 8, 2023, the Oklahoman report­ed that AG Drummond has declined Representative Humphrey’s request to retest DNA evi­dence in Anthony Sanchez’s…

Reverend Melissa Potts-Bowers, the spir­i­tu­al advi­sor to Michael Tisius, recent­ly described her expe­ri­ence min­is­ter­ing to him dur­ing his exe­cu­tion as ​“quite hor­ri­fy­ing — as it’s intend­ed to be.” Mr. Tisius was exe­cut­ed by the state of Missouri on June 6,…

In a July 31 Letter to the Editor, Demetrius Minor, the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty crit­i­cizes the Louisiana Pardon Board deci­sion to decline review of clemen­cy peti­tions filed by near­ly every death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in…

On August 1, 2023, death-qual­i­fied fed­er­al jurors unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed a sen­tence of death for Robert Bowers, who they had ear­li­er con­vict­ed of killing 11 Jewish wor­ship­pers at a Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue in October 2018. The jury agreed with all five aggra­vat­ing fac­tors alleged by the pros­e­cu­tion dur­ing the penal­ty phase but reject­ed defense counsel’s argu­ment that Mr. Bowers’ schiz­o­phre­nia and delu­sions meant he should not be sen­tenced to death. He will be for­mal­ly sen­tenced by the court on…