Publications & Testimony

As California pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cials sub­mit­ted sig­na­tures back­ing a bal­lot ini­tia­tive intend­ed to speed up the state’s dys­func­tion­al death penal­ty appeals process, a coali­tion of inno­cence advo­cates and wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed exonerees warned that the pro­pos­al will sub­stan­tial­ly increase the risk that California will exe­cute an inno­cent per­son. The ini­tia­tive, spon­sored by dis­trict attor­neys with major fund­ing by the state’s prison guards’ union, would…

I. Beverly Lake, Jr. — a staunch sup­port­er of North Carolina​’s death penal­ty dur­ing his years as a State Senator and who, as a for­mer Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, repeat­ed­ly vot­ed to uphold death sen­tences — has changed his stance on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In a recent piece for The Huffington Post, Lake said he not only sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a State Senator, he ​“vig­or­ous­ly advo­cat­ed” for it and ​“cast my vote at appro­pri­ate times to uphold…

Cert. grant­ed May 26, 2015 as Foster v. HumphreyArgument: Nov. 2, 2015Decided: May 23,…

On May 23, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Timothy Foster (pic­tured) because Georgia pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly exer­cised their dis­cre­tionary jury strikes on the basis of race to exclude African American jurors. The vote was 7 – 1, with Justice Thomas the lone dis­senter. Foster is now enti­tled to a new…

Following sev­en months of inves­ti­ga­tion into the caus­es of Oklahoma​’s botched exe­cu­tion of Charles Warner using an unau­tho­rized exe­cu­tion drug and its near-exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip with the same wrong drug, an Oklahoma grand jury issued a report on May 19 iden­ti­fy­ing a wide range of what it char­ac­ter­ized as ​“neg­li­gent,” ​“care­less,” and in some instances ​“reck­less” con­duct by state offi­cials that devi­at­ed from the state’s…

U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake ruled on May 18 that a lethal injec­tion chal­lenge brought by Arizona death row pris­on­ers may move for­ward, pre­vent­ing Arizona from car­ry­ing out any exe­cu­tions before the report­ed expi­ra­tion date of its sup­ply of a key exe­cu­tion drug. Arizona has said that it is unable to replen­ish its sup­ply of mida­zo­lam, an anti-anx­i­ety med­ica­tion that a num­ber of states have used as a seda­tive in mul­ti-drug lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. The death row…

One year after the Nebraska leg­is­la­ture vot­ed to repeal the death penal­ty and over­rode a guber­na­to­r­i­al veto of that mea­sure, actions in leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try sug­gest that the state’s efforts sig­nalled a grow­ing move­ment against the death penal­ty by con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors and that sup­port for the death penal­ty among Republican leg­is­la­tors is no longer a giv­en. Reporting in The Washington Post, Amber Phillips writes that Republican leg­is­la­tors in ten states spon­sored or…

100 years ago, Jesse Washington, a 17-year-old black farm­hand accused of mur­der­ing his white female employ­er was lynched on the steps of the Waco, Texas cour­t­house (pic­tured), moments after Washington’s tri­al end­ed and only sev­en days after the mur­der had occurred. The grue­some lynch­ing took place in front of law enforce­ment per­son­nel and 15,000 spec­ta­tors, none of whom inter­vened to end the vio­lence. Washington, whom reports indi­cate may have been…

On May 13, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Pfizer announced that it would impose strict dis­tri­b­u­tion con­trols to block states from obtain­ing and using its med­i­cines in exe­cu­tions. In a state­ment, the com­pa­ny said, ​“Pfizer makes its prod­ucts to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve. Consistent with these val­ues, Pfizer strong­ly objects to the use of its prod­ucts as lethal injec­tions for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” With Pfizer’s announce­ment, every major phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny that produces…

More than 12,000 pages of California prison doc­u­ments dis­closed by court order on May 7 reveal prob­lem­at­ic con­duct by state offi­cials and the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high price tag the state would have paid for lethal injec­tion drugs if it were car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions. The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which obtained the doc­u­ments after a six-month legal bat­tle, say they show that the California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation (CDCR) significantly…