Publications & Testimony

In her new book, Confronting the Death Penalty: How Language Influences Jurors in Capital Cases, Marshall University Anthropology Professor Robin Conley exam­ines ​“how lan­guage fil­ters, restricts, and at times is used to manip­u­late jurors’ expe­ri­ences while they serve on cap­i­tal tri­als and again when they reflect on them after­ward.” Conley spent fif­teen months in ethno­graph­ic field­work observ­ing four Texas cap­i­tal tri­als and inter­view­ing the jurors involved. She…

As California’s new lethal injec­tion pro­to­col moves the state towards resum­ing exe­cu­tions, Kevin Cooper (pic­tured, left) is seek­ing clemen­cy from Gov. Jerry Brown on the grounds that he is inno­cent. Cooper — one of 18 death-row pris­on­ers who have exhaust­ed their court appeals and face exe­cu­tion — was sen­tenced to death for the 1983 mur­ders of a mar­ried cou­ple, their 10-year-old daugh­ter, and the daugh­ter’s 11-year-old friend. However, evi­dence that was sup­pressed as a result of police and…

Capital cas­es are on hold in Florida and Delaware as their state courts con­sid­er the impact of the recent U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing in Hurst v. Florida. The Hurst deci­sion ruled that Florida’s sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because a judge, rather than a jury, deter­mined the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that made a case eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence. The Florida Supreme Court has already delayed one Florida exe­cu­tion to…

A report released on February 3 by the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) report­ed that a record 149 defen­dants were exon­er­at­ed in 2015, includ­ing 58 con­vict­ed of homi­cide, also a record for exon­er­a­tions in a sin­gle year. Overall, 39% of last year’s exon­er­a­tions were in homi­cide cas­es. Using slight­ly dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria than DPIC’s exon­er­a­tion list, the NRE report­ed five exon­er­a­tions of defen­dants who had been sen­tenced to…

Missouri has paid state exe­cu­tion­ers $284,551.84 in cash since November 2013, with­out pro­vid­ing noti­fi­ca­tion of the pay­ments to tax author­i­ties, accord­ing to a BuzzFeed News inves­ti­ga­tion. The pay­ments, most­ly in envelopes filled with $100 bills, were intend­ed to keep the iden­ti­ties of exe­cu­tion team mem­bers hid­den from the pub­lic by lim­it­ing the paper trail. However, Missouri’s Department of Corrections failed to file 1099 forms with the IRS for the cash payments,…

Brandon Astor Jones (pic­tured), the first per­son Georgia plans to put to death in 2016, is two weeks short of his 73^rd birth­day, has been on death row for 35 years, and shows signs of demen­tia. If his lat­est appeals and his appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy are denied, he will be the old­est per­son Georgia has ever exe­cut­ed. Jones’ case rais­es ques­tions of pro­por­tion­al­i­ty and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty. He and his co-defen­dant Van Solomon — both African American -…

“Ohio’s death penal­ty is plagued by vast inequities” ground­ed in race, gen­der, and geog­ra­phy, accord­ing to a new University of North Carolina study. UNC-Chapel Hill polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor Frank Baumgartner exam­ined the 53 exe­cu­tions Ohio has con­duct­ed since resum­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the 1970s. His study found ​“quite sig­nif­i­cant” racial, gen­der, and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in Ohio’s exe­cu­tions that, Baumgartner said, ​“under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the state’s abil­i­ty to car­ry out the…

In an op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel, for­mer Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero (pic­tured) and ABA Death Penalty Assessment Team mem­ber Mark Schlakman call on the Florida leg­is­la­ture to repair the con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions in Florida’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing scheme. The U.S. Supreme Court found in Hurst v. Florida that the state’s sen­tenc­ing process vio­lates the Sixth Amendment because a jury does not unan­i­mous­ly find the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that jus­ti­fy a death…

A decline in exe­cu­tions is like­ly in Missouri after two years of unusu­al­ly high num­bers. In 2014, Missouri tied with Texas for the most exe­cu­tions in the U.S., and it was sec­ond to Texas in 2015. However, chang­ing atti­tudes about the death penal­ty – sim­i­lar to nation­al shifts – are evi­dent in Missouri’s sen­tenc­ing trends: no one was sen­tenced to death in Missouri in 2014 or 2015, and less than one per­son per year has been sen­tenced to death in the past sev­en years. Moreover, a…