Publications & Testimony

Texas’ Third Court of Appeals heard oral argu­ment on May 11 on the state’s appeal of a tri­al court rul­ing requir­ing it to reveal the iden­ti­ty of its lethal injec­tion drug sup­pli­er in a pair of April 2014 exe­cu­tions. The suit, ini­tial­ly brought on behalf of the two exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers, now impli­cates Texas’ Public Information Act. The pris­on­ers’ attor­neys argued that iden­ti­fy­ing the sup­pli­er of pen­to­bar­bi­tal, the drug used by Texas in exe­cu­tions, was nec­es­sary to ver­i­fy that…

UPDATE: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit stayed Madison’s exe­cu­tion, order­ing oral argu­ment on his com­pe­ten­cy claim. Previously: Alabama is prepar­ing to exe­cute Vernon Madison (pic­tured) on May 12, as his lawyers con­tin­ue to press their claim that the 65-year-old pris­on­er is incom­pe­tent to be…

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch (pic­tured) ruled on May 9 that Florida’s new death sen­tenc­ing law vio­lates the state’s con­sti­tu­tion. Ruling in the case of Karon Gaiter, who is await­ing a cap­i­tal tri­al, Judge Hirsch said new law’s require­ment that at least 10 jurors agree to the death penal­ty before a defen­dant can be sen­tenced to death vio­lat­ed Florida’s con­sti­tu­tion­al require­ment that all jury ver­dicts must be unan­i­mous. ​“For the ulti­mate decisions…

Just 27% of Houston-area res­i­dents pre­fer the death penal­ty over life sen­tences for those con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der, accord­ing to a new report by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. Harris County, the largest coun­ty in the Houston met­ro­pol­i­tan area, ​“earned its rep­u­ta­tion as the ​‘death penal­ty cap­i­tal of America,’” the report says, ​“hav­ing exe­cut­ed more peo­ple since 1976 … than any oth­er coun­ty in the nation.” At its peak, Harris County…

Thirty years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1986 deci­sion in Batson v. Kentucky pro­hib­it­ed the inten­tion­al exclu­sion of prospec­tive jurors on the basis of race, dis­crim­i­na­tion in cap­i­tal jury selec­tion con­tin­ues to plague the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty across the…

On May 5, the Florida Supreme Court will hear oral argu­ment in the case of Timothy Hurst, whose death sen­tence was over­turned in the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion Hurst v. Florida. The state court must deter­mine whether the high court’s rul­ing, which struck down Florida’s sen­tenc­ing scheme, enti­tles Hurst to a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, reduces his sen­tence to life with­out parole, or requires some oth­er out­come. The case may also decide…

This week, two decades-old cas­es involv­ing men with inno­cence claims reached final res­o­lu­tion: Louisiana inmate Gary Tyler (pic­tured) was released after 42 years in prison and Paul Gatling was exon­er­at­ed in New York more than 50 years after his wrong­ful con­vic­tion. Both men had once faced the death penal­ty. Tyler was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the fatal shoot­ing of a 13-year-old white boy in 1974 dur­ing a riot over…

The U.S. Supreme Court has vacat­ed a deci­sion of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals uphold­ing a death sen­tence imposed on Alabama death row pris­on­er Bart Johnson, and has direct­ed the state court to recon­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Alabama’s death-sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures. Johnson, rep­re­sent­ed by lawyers from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), had chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of his death sen­tence, which was imposed by a tri­al judge after a…

A Florida tri­al judge in St. Lucie County sen­tenced Eriese Tisdale to death on April 29 for the killing of a sher­if­f’s sergeant, rely­ing on sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures from the ver­sion of Florida’s death penal­ty law that the U.S. Supreme Court declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Hurst v. Florida. The jury in Tisdale’s case con­sid­ered the evi­dence in the penal­ty phase of Tisdale’s tri­al under the old Florida law, vot­ing 9 – 3 to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence without…

On April 24, just days before a Texas fed­er­al appeals courts was to hear his case, Max Soffar — who spent 35 years on death row con­stant­ly main­tain­ing his inno­cence — died of liv­er can­cer at the age of 60. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked Soffar to the crime for which he was sen­tenced to death, and Soffar — a sev­enth-grade drop-out with brain dam­age from fetal alco­hol syn­drome — said that he con­fessed to police only after hours of coercive…