Publications & Testimony

Lawyers for 67-year-old Vernon Madison (pictured), a death-row prisoner whose diagnosis of ​“irreversible and progressive” vascular dementia has left him with no memory of the crime for which he was sentenced to death, have filed a motion to stay his January 25 execution in Alabama. In a petition for writ of certiorari and motion for stay of execution filed January 18 in the U.S. Supreme Court, Madison’s lawyers argue that the courts wrongly found Madison competent to be executed based upon the…

Kent Whitaker, who survived a shooting in which his wife, Tricia and younger son, Kevin were murdered, has asked the state of Texas to spare the life of his only remaining son, Thomas ​“Bart” Whitaker (pictured), who was convicted and sentenced to death for their murders. Kent Whitaker told the Austin American-Statesman, ​“I have seen too much killing already. I don’t want to see him executed right there in front of my eyes,” he said. The petition for clemency filed on January 10 by Bart…

A prosecutor’s duty, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1935, ​“is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.” Yet prosecutors across the U.S. have refused to acknowledge the innocence of defendants who have been wrongfully convicted, obstructing release by retrying death-sentenced defendants despite exonerating evidence, or conditioning their release upon ​“Alford pleas,” which force defendants to choose between clearing their names or obtaining their freedom. In an article for…

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be favoring arguments presented by Louisiana death-row prisoner Robert McCoy (pictured), who was convicted and sentenced to death after his lawyer, in the face of repeated instructions from his client to argue his innocence, instead told the jury that McCoy had killed three family members. McCoy’s trial lawyer, Larry English, said he ignored his client’s instructions and conceded guilt hoping jurors would then vote against the death penalty…

For the second time in four months, a Missouri judge has imposed a death sentence after a capital-sentencing jury did not reach a unanimous sentencing decision. Greene County Circuit Judge Thomas Mountjoy sentenced 49-year-old Craig Wood (pictured) to death on January 11 for the February 2014 killing of 10-year-old Hailey Owens. Wood was convicted of first-degree murder in November 2017, but the jury — empaneled from out-of-county jurors as a result of extensive pretrial publicity — could not reach…

With the backing of the state’s governor and attorney general, Democratic and Republican sponsors of a bill to repeal Washington’s capital-punishment statute have expressed optimism that the state may abolish the death penalty in 2018. In 2017, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, was joined by former Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, in calling on the legislature to end the state’s death penalty. Ferguson, who has said “[t]here is no role for capital punishment in a fair…

States that have recently abolished the death penalty have not experienced the ​“parade of horribles” — including increased murder rates — predicted by death-penalty proponents, according to death-penalty experts who participated in a panel discussion at the 2017 American Bar Association national meeting in New York City. Instead, the panelists said, abolition appears to have created opportunities to move forward with other broader criminal justice reforms. The transcript of that panel…

To deter future use of the death penalty in their county, the Blaine County, Idaho County Commissioners on January 2 voted to consider withdrawing from the state’s Capital Crimes Defense Fund as a way to choke off state funding in capital prosecutions. ​“This is a way for our county to say we don’t support the death penalty, and that we don’t want the prosecutor seeking it in Blaine County,” said Commissioner Larry Schoen (pictured), who proposed the withdrawal. Two days later, however, the…