Publications & Testimony

A September 20 report by the Texas Defender Service says that Texas ​“has failed to ensure effec­tive coun­sel” for appel­lants in cap­i­tal cas­es and that the state’s sys­tem of review­ing death penal­ty cas­es on direct appeal is ​“in dire need of reform.” The report, titled Lethally Deficient, reviewed all 84 cap­i­tal direct appeals decid­ed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) from 2009 to 2015 and iden­ti­fied numer­ous ​“per­sis­tent…

Newspaper edi­to­r­i­al boards in California are over­whelm­ing­ly sup­port­ing a November bal­lot ini­tia­tive to abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty and replace it with life with­out parole plus resti­tu­tion, and are uni­form­ly reject­ing an oppos­ing ini­tia­tive that pur­ports to speed up the appeals process. At least eight California news­pa­pers have pub­lished edi­to­ri­als sup­port­ing Proposition 62 and oppos­ing Proposition 66, and Ballotpedia reports that it is aware of no edi­to­r­i­al boards that…

Judicial over­ride of jury rec­om­men­da­tions of life, the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences after non-unan­i­mous jury sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions, and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, race bias, and inef­fec­tive defense coun­sel have made Mobile County, Alabama one of the most pro­lif­ic death sen­tenc­ing coun­ties in the United…

For the first time in two decades, Oklahoma will go at least two years with­out an exe­cu­tion. As part of an agree­ment in a fed­er­al law­suit brought by the state’s death row pris­on­ers, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (pic­tured) has said the state will not request exe­cu­tion dates for at least five months after the state adopts a new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Because of this, when the Oklahoma Board of Corrections met on September 13, 2016, the state already…

Today, DPIC launch­es a new pod­cast series, ​“Discussions With DPIC,” which will fea­ture month­ly, unscript­ed con­ver­sa­tions with death penal­ty experts on a wide vari­ety of top­ics. The inau­gur­al episode fea­tures a con­ver­sa­tion between Texas Defender Services staff attor­ney Kate Black (pic­tured) and DPIC host Anne Holsinger, who dis­cuss the case of Jeffery Wood and Texas’ unusu­al legal doc­trine known as the ​“law of…

Roger King, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor in Philadelphia who at one point was respon­si­ble for 20% of all the death sen­tences imposed in Pennsylvania, died of kid­ney can­cer on August 24. When King retired in 2008, he held the record for most death sen­tences obtained by a sin­gle Pennsylvania pros­e­cu­tor. None of the men he sent to death row has ever been…

In a recent com­men­tary in the Columbus Dispatch, for­mer Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro (pic­tured) crit­i­cized the state’s death penal­ty as ​“a bro­ken sys­tem that cur­rent­ly serves only the inter­est of Ohio pros­e­cu­tors” and said that keep­ing ​“the death penal­ty is just not worth it any more.” As a state leg­is­la­tor, Petro helped write Ohio’s cur­rent death-penal­ty law and he over­saw eigh­teen exe­cu­tions as Attorney General from 2003 – 2007. He says, at the time “[w]e…

New data sug­gests that states that cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing statutes that per­mit judges to impose death sen­tences by over­rid­ing jury rec­om­men­da­tions for life or after juries have returned non-unan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tions for death may increase the risk of wrongful…

The geo­graph­ic arbi­trari­ness, high rates of offi­cial mis­con­duct, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and poor defense rep­re­sen­ta­tion char­ac­ter­is­tic of out­lier juris­dic­tions that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly seek and impose the death penal­ty in the United States are all present in Clark County, Nevada​’s admin­is­tra­tion of the death…

Calling racial bias in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty ​“an undis­put­ed fact,” the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators (NHCSL), a group of 320 Hispanic leg­is­la­tors, has passed a res­o­lu­tion urg­ing leg­isla­tive action in all state and fed­er­al juris­dic­tions to repeal the death penal­ty across the United States. The leg­is­la­tors note that the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem sub­jects ​“Black, Latino, Native Americans, and all peo­ple of col­or” to more punitive treatment,…