Publications & Testimony

Five groups, rep­re­sent­ing defense lawyers, for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, and orga­ni­za­tions devot­ed to pro­tect­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al lib­er­ties have filed ami­cus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court in sup­port of Texas death row pris­on­er Duane Buck. Buck was sen­tenced to death when a psy­chi­a­trist pre­sent­ed by his own lawyer said he posed a greater poten­tial dan­ger to soci­ety because he is Black, and the case attained wide­spread noto­ri­ety after the new Texas attor­ney general…

A new sur­vey con­duct­ed by SoonerPoll has found that while three-quar­ters of like­ly Oklahoma vot­ers say they sup­port the death penal­ty in the­o­ry, a major­i­ty (53%) sup­port abol­ish­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and replac­ing it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole, plus resti­tu­tion to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Among every polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion, more sup­port­ed the plan to replace the death penal­ty than favored keep­ing it, with a major­i­ty of Democrats (58%) and inde­pen­dents (57%) supporting…

Distribution restric­tions put in place by major phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in the United States against mis­use of their med­i­cines and export reg­u­la­tions insti­tut­ed by the European Union have made it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for states to obtain sup­plies of drugs for use in exe­cu­tions. However, despite these restric­tions, some states have obtained phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts man­u­fac­tured by these com­pa­nies for use in lethal…

Lawyers for Jeffery Wood (pic­tured), a Texas death row pris­on­er who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed August 24 despite undis­put­ed evi­dence that he has nev­er killed any­one, have filed a new peti­tion in state court chal­leng­ing his death sen­tence on mul­ti­ple grounds. They argue that Wood can­not be sub­ject to the death penal­ty because he nei­ther killed nor intend­ed for any­one to be killed and was not even aware the rob­bery in which a code­fen­dant killed a store clerk…

The Delaware Supreme Court on August 2 declared the state’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, leav­ing Delaware with­out a valid death penal­ty statute. In the case of Benjamin Rauf v. State of Delaware, the court held that Delaware’s death sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ples recent­ly set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2016 deci­sion in Hurst v. Florida. Hurst stat­ed that…

On August 1, The Movement for Black Lives issued a 40-point pol­i­cy plat­form that includes a call for the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The plat­form, which was writ­ten or endorsed by more than 60 activist groups includ­ing the Black Lives Matter Network, describes its pur­pose as ​“articulat[ing] our vision of a fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent world.” The por­tion of the plat­form seek­ing ​“an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment” calls the death penal­ty ​“moral­ly repug­nant,” and links it to the lega­cy of…

Nearly three-quar­ters of Kentuckians (72.4%) would sup­port a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while prob­lems in the admin­is­tra­tion of Kentucky’s death penal­ty are addressed, accord­ing to a new poll released on August 1 by the University of Kentucky Survey Research Center. Nearly two-thirds (62.6%) of those who said they sup­port the death penal­ty were nev­er­the­less in favor of a mora­to­ri­um. The poll also found that 57.8% of respon­dents pre­ferred a lengthy prison term (options ranged…

An ini­tia­tive on the California bal­lot this November billed by its sup­port­ers as a reform alter­na­tive to abol­ish­ing the state’s death penal­ty will cost the state tens of mil­lions of dol­lars to imple­ment, accord­ing to an analy­sis by the Alarcón Advocacy Center at Loyola Law School, and ​“will not speed up…

Twenty years ago, frus­trat­ed by what they per­ceived to be the slow pace of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Colorado leg­is­la­tors adopt­ed a law to ​“fix” their death penal­ty by speed­ing up appeals. Proponents and oppo­nents of the state’s death penal­ty agree on one thing: the law has­n’t worked. As The Denver Post reports, the state law intend­ed to stream­line the death penal­ty appeals process by impos­ing a two-year dead­line for deci­sion and con­sol­i­dat­ing direct appeals and…