Publications & Testimony

More than 80% of the 241 death sen­tences imposed in Louisiana since 1976 have been reversed on appeal, and one death row pris­on­er has been exon­er­at­ed for every three exe­cu­tions in the state, accord­ing to a new study by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and sta­tis­ti­cian Tim Lyman. The study, to be pub­lished in the Southern University Law Center’s Journal of Race, Gender and Poverty, also reveals dra­mat­ic racial dis­par­i­ties in both the trial…

Arizona’s last exe­cu­tion, the botched lethal injec­tion of Joseph Wood in July 2014, sparked con­tro­ver­sy and legal chal­lenges to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure, and came at a time when Arizona was strug­gling not only with the logis­tics of car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions, but also broad­er issues of fair­ness and costs. In a sweep­ing piece for The Arizona Republic, Michael Kiefer, who wit­nessed Wood’s exe­cu­tion, describes the his­tor­i­cal and legal…

A law review arti­cle by Brooks Emanuel (pic­tured), a Law Fellow at the Equal Justice Initiative, argues that North Carolina’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute vio­lates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution because it lacks a mean­ing­ful appel­late mech­a­nism to pre­vent the arbi­trary and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty. Citing exten­sive his­tor­i­cal evi­dence, Emanuel argues that ​“racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in North Carolina death sen­tences was…

The assets of The Apothecary Shoppe, a Tulsa, Oklahoma com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy that pro­vid­ed lethal injec­tion drugs to Missouri, have been auc­tioned off after the com­pa­ny default­ed on its loans, and is being sold after admit­ting to near­ly two thou­sand vio­la­tions of phar­ma­cy reg­u­la­tions, accord­ing to a report by BuzzFeed News. Inspectors from the fed­er­al Food and Drug Administration and the Oklahoma Board of Pharmacy found that the drug com­pounder had…

Bobby James Moore (pic­tured) faces exe­cu­tion in Texas after the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals reject­ed his claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in September 2015, say­ing he failed to meet Texas’ ​“Briseño fac­tors” (named after the Texas court deci­sion that announced them), an unsci­en­tif­ic sev­en-pronged test which a judge based on the char­ac­ter Lennie Smalls from John Steinbeck’s ​“Of Mice and Men.” In doing so, the appeals court reversed a…

The high cost of cap­i­tal tri­als has put the death penal­ty under scruti­ny in Arizona and Colorado. In Mohave County, Arizona, where two cap­i­tal cas­es have already cost about $239,000 this fis­cal year, County Supervisors have been told that the defense costs for try­ing these two cas­es and pur­su­ing three oth­er cap­i­tal cas­es that are cur­rent­ly on appeal will be $380,000 this fis­cal year, with com­pa­ra­ble costs expect­ed for next fis­cal year. County…

Leonard Edloe (pic­tured), President of the American Pharmacists Association Foundation has urged Virginia law­mak­ers to reject Governor Terry McAuliffe’s pro­pos­al to con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of the state’s exe­cu­tion drug sup­pli­ers, say­ing that the plan ​“under­mines every­thing our pro­fes­sion stands for, and is actu­al­ly against the law.” In an op-ed in The Virginian-Pilot on the eve of a veto ses­sion in which the Virginia state legislature…

On April 13, the Tennessee House of Representatives joined the Tennessee Senate in unan­i­mous­ly approv­ing a bill that would man­date the preser­va­tion of bio­log­i­cal evi­dence in cas­es involv­ing a death sen­tence. The House vot­ed 94 – 0 in favor of the bill after the Senate had passed the bill on April 4 by a 31 – 0 vote. If the gov­er­nor signs the bill, such evi­dence must be held until the defen­dant is exe­cut­ed, dies, or is released from prison. Destruction of evidence…

California death row pris­on­er Kevin Cooper (pic­tured), whose inno­cence claims recent­ly spurred the American Bar Association to call for a reprieve, recent­ly authored an arti­cle describ­ing what is was like for him to expe­ri­ence near­ly being exe­cut­ed on February 10, 2004. Cooper described the days lead­ing up to his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, which includ­ed round-the-clock mon­i­tor­ing, med­ical exams, and meet­ings with his attorneys.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court dock­et indi­cates that its con­fer­enc­ing of Mr. Buck’s case, orig­i­nal­ly set for April 22, has been resched­uled. The Court is now sched­uled to con­sid­er­ing the case on April 29. PREVIOUSLY: On April 22, the U.S. Supreme Court is sched­uled to con­fer on whether to review the case of Duane Buck (pic­tured), who was sen­tenced to death in Harris County, Texas after a psy­chol­o­gist tes­ti­fied that he posed an increased risk of future…