Publications & Testimony

A St. Charles County trial judge has sentenced a Missouri man to death two months after 11 of the 12 jurors in his case had voted to spare his life. On October 6, 2017, Judge Kelly Wayne Parker disregarded the near-unanimous vote of the jury on August 13 and imposed the death penalty upon former Dent County deputy sheriff and state correctional officer Marvin Rice (pictured) for murdering his ex-girlfriend, Annette Durham, during a custody dispute over their son. The judge also sentenced Rice…

In separate statements issued in connection with the 15^th World and European Day against the Death Penalty on October 10, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and European Union U.S. Ambassador David O’Sullivan have called upon all nations to halt scheduled executions and abolish the death penalty. In his first ever statement on capital punishment since becoming Secretary-General on January 1, 2017, Guterres described capital punishment as a ​“barbaric practice” that, he said, ​“has…

Though no physical evidence links him to the crime, Texas is set to execute Robert Pruett (pictured) on October 12 for the 1999 stabbing death of a state correctional officer who was at the center of a prison corruption investigation. Results of a DNA test of the murder weapon in 2015 found DNA that matched neither Pruett nor the victim, Officer Daniel Nagle. According to Pruett’s pending clemency petition, Officer Nagle was working to identify corrupt correctional officers who had been…

Two cases in which prosecutors have elected to pursue the death penalty against aging or infirm defendants who will almost certainly never be executed have raised questions about the costs and benefits of capital charges and the arbitrary exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Federal prosecutors in Missouri are seeking the death penalty against 61-year-old Ulysses Jones Jr., a man with terminal renal disease, for the 2006 killing of another prisoner at a federal prison hospital. At the same…

The United States has voted against an historic resolution passed by the United Nations Human Rights Council condemning the criminalization of and use of the death penalty for apostasy, blasphemy, adultery, and consensual same-sex relations and calling on nations in which the death penalty is legal to ensure that it is not imposed ​“arbitrarily or in a discriminatory manner.” The resolution also called for an end to the discriminatory use of the death penalty ​“against persons belonging to racial…

Death-row exoneree John Thompson (pictured), described by Innocence Project New Orleans director Emily Maw, as ​“an amazing force in the world” and a ​“national legend,” died October 3 at a New Orleans-area hospital after suffering a heart attack. Exonerated in 2003, Thompson had survived a corrupt Orleans Parish prosecution, seven death warrants, and an imminent execution by the state of Louisiana for a murder he did not commit. Following his release, he became a national advocate for criminal…

Duane Buck (pictured), the Texas death-row prisoner whose controversial racially tainted death sentence was reversed by the U.S Supreme Court in February, has been resentenced to life in prison. In a plea deal entered in a Harris County (Houston) courtroom on October 3, Buck, who is 54, pled guilty to two new counts of attempted murder that each carried terms of 60 years in prison to be served concurrently with two life sentences imposed on his capital murder charges. In a news release…

“The death penalty in the United States is at the end of its rope [and] its abolition will be a catalyst for reforming our criminal justice system.” So argues University of Virginia Law Professor Brandon L. Garrett in his widely anticipated new book, End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice, which analyzes the reasons behind the steep decline in capital punishment in over the last 25 years. With the help of other researchers at the University of Virginia…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has upheld the death sentence imposed by an Alabama trial judge who disregarded the jury’s 10 – 2 vote in favor of a life sentence and sentenced Bobby Waldrop (pictured) to death because of his race. When he imposed Waldrop’s death sentence, Randolph County Circuit Court Judge Dale Segrest, who is white, referred to three prior cases in which he had overriden jury life verdicts and said: ​“If I had not imposed the death sentence [in this case], I…

The United States Supreme Court will review a Louisiana death-penalty case to answer the question ​“Is it unconstitutional for defense counsel to concede an accused’s guilt over the accused’s express objection?” On September 27, the court agreed to hear McCoy v. Louisiana, a case in which defense counsel informed the jury in his opening argument that Robert McCoy (pictured) — who was charged with murdering the son, mother, and stepfather of his estranged wife — had ​“committed these crimes,” even…