Publications & Testimony

The exe­cu­tion of John Conner on July 15 end­ed a two-month peri­od with­out exe­cu­tions in the United States, the longest such peri­od in the coun­try since 2007 – 2008. A range of state-spe­cif­ic issues have con­tributed to this stop­page, includ­ing ques­tions about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of state death penal­ty prac­tices, prob­lems relat­ing to lethal injec­tion drugs and state exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols, and the fall­out from botched…

A court hear­ing is under way in the cap­i­tal tri­al of Donald Fell in a Vermont fed­er­al dis­trict court chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. This week, death penal­ty experts tes­ti­fied for the defense about sys­temic prob­lems Fell’s lawyers say may ren­der the fed­er­al death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Fell was sen­tenced to death in 2006, but was grant­ed a new tri­al because of juror mis­con­duct. The hear­ing began on July 11 and is scheduled…

Georgia is con­tin­u­ing with prepa­ra­tions to exe­cute John Conner (pic­tured) on July 14 after the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles denied his clemen­cy peti­tion and the Georgia Supreme Court denied him a stay of…

In a land­mark rul­ing in McCleskey v. Kemp in 1987, a bit­ter­ly divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court vot­ed 5 – 4 vote that sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty was insuf­fi­cient to over­turn an indi­vid­ual death sen­tence. A new book, Race and the Death Penalty: The Legacy of McCleskey v. Kemp, edit­ed by David P. Keys, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice at New Mexico State University and R.J. Maratea of the Youth Research…

During his 45 years in law enforce­ment, includ­ing 24 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tor Tom Parker (pic­tured) changed his view on the death penal­ty. ​“There were times dur­ing my career when I would glad­ly have pushed the but­ton on a mur­der­er,” he said. ​“Today, my posi­tion would be, life with­out parole.” Parker says that see­ing cor­rupt homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tions con­vinced him that inno­cent peo­ple could be exe­cut­ed. As result, he now opposes…

A fed­er­al court jury has award­ed six Nebraska exonerees (pic­tured, at their exon­er­a­tion) $28 mil­lion in dam­ages for offi­cial mis­con­duct that led to their wrong­ful con­vic­tions in the 1985 rape and mur­der of Helen…

In a chap­ter from the recent­ly released American Bar Association pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2016, Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, describes sig­nif­i­cant trends and recent cas­es relat­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Tabak high­lights the ongo­ing declines in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions across the United States, as well as the increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in a small number of…

Just days after a split Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, Arkansas’ sup­ply of vecuro­ni­um bro­mide — a par­a­lyt­ic agent used in the state’s three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col — expired, leav­ing the sta­tus of future exe­cu­tions unclear. At that time, Governor Asa Hutchinson said that he want­ed the Department of Correction to obtain a new sup­ply of the drug rather than change the state’s method of exe­cu­tion. In 2015, the state spent $25,000 for lethal…

Forty years after Gregg v. Georgia ush­ered in the mod­ern era of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States, the death penal­ty is in decline across the coun­try and in Texas. The Lone Star State con­tin­ues to lead the nation in exe­cu­tions — with near­ly half of all exe­cu­tions in the U.S. this year — but the Amarillo Globe-News reports that few­er Texas pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing death sen­tences and few­er juries are impos­ing them. According to the…

A fed­er­al judge has rebuffed an attempt by Arizona to dis­miss a law­suit filed by the state’s death row pris­on­ers chal­leng­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion prac­tices. The state argued at a hear­ing in the case in U.S. District Court on June 29, that the pris­on­ers’ law­suit should be declared moot because Arizona’s sup­ply of mida­zo­lam — the first drug in one of the state’s four exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols — had expired and that the state has been unable to obtain a new sup­ply of…