Publications & Testimony

Over the past two weeks, two Florida death row pris­on­ers filed fresh chal­lenges to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ deci­sions to sign his tenth and eleventh death war­rants of 2025. On July 29, 2025, Kayle Barrington Bates (also known as Maud Dib Al Sharif) brought a civ­il suit against Gov. DeSantis alleg­ing Florida’s exe­cu­tion war­rant process​“is infect­ed with racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al arbi­trari­ness.” Included in the claim is a statistical analysis…

On August 5, 2025, a group of ten Arkansas death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing a new state law that autho­rizes their exe­cu­tion using nitro­gen gas. Act 302, which Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law in March 2025, went into effect on the same day the law­suit was filed. The pris­on­ers’ law­suit argues that the new law is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it vio­lates the state constitution’s sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. All ten pris­on­ers includ­ed in the…

On July 31, 2025, the state of Florida exe­cut­ed its ninth per­son this year, Edward Zakrzewski, mark­ing the high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions in a sin­gle year in Florida in mod­ern death penal­ty his­to­ry. The haste with which Governor DeSantis is sched­ul­ing exe­cu­tions has prompt­ed many ques­tions and addi­tion­al scruti­ny about a process that is cloaked in secre­cy and a deci­­sion-mak­er who is untrou­bled by the seri­ous issues in many of the cas­es set for execution. ###…

An unde­ni­able truth of the death penal­ty is that it car­ries the inher­ent risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent indi­vid­u­als. Many may believe that the exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent per­son is an anom­aly and that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has ade­quate safe­guards in place to rec­ti­fy wrong­ful con­vic­tions. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Fact: For Every 8 Individuals Executed in the Modern Era, One Other Death-Sentenced Person has been Found Innocent. Since 1973, 200…

In a July 10, 2025, order, Marion County Alabama Circuit Court Judge Talmage Lee Carter issued a tem­po­rary stay of exe­cu­tion for David Lee Roberts because of con­cerns regard­ing his men­tal com­pe­ten­cy. Mr. Roberts was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on August 21. Judge Carter’s order tasked the Alabama Department of Mental Health with deter­min­ing whether Mr. Roberts has a​“ratio­nal under­stand­ing” about why the state will exe­cute him. In his order, Judge Carter wrote, “[t]he issue…

On July 22, 2025, attor­neys with the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation filed a peti­tion on behalf of two crim­i­nal defen­dants — Jordan Clarke and Joshua George — alleg­ing Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh has demon­strat­ed a pat­tern of improp­er­ly threat­en­ing or seek­ing death sen­tences in vio­la­tion of the United States Constitution and the Pennsylvania Constitution. The attor­neys are ask­ing the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to use its​“extra­or­di­nary…