Publications & Testimony

In a 5 – 2 deci­sion issued May 26, the Connecticut Supreme Court reaf­firmed its August 2015 deci­sion in State v. Santiago that the death penal­ty vio­lates Connecticut’s…

The Nebraska Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on May 25 in a chal­lenge to the pro­posed November ref­er­en­dum that could reverse the state leg­is­la­ture’s 2015 repeal of the death penal­ty (vote results pic­tured left). Christy and Richard Hargesheimer, who oppose the death penal­ty, are chal­leng­ing the doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted by Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, the orga­ni­za­tion sup­port­ing the ref­er­en­dum, on the grounds that…

As California pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cials sub­mit­ted sig­na­tures back­ing a bal­lot ini­tia­tive intend­ed to speed up the state’s dys­func­tion­al death penal­ty appeals process, a coali­tion of inno­cence advo­cates and wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed exonerees warned that the pro­pos­al will sub­stan­tial­ly increase the risk that California will exe­cute an inno­cent per­son. The ini­tia­tive, spon­sored by dis­trict attor­neys with major fund­ing by the…

I. Beverly Lake, Jr. — a staunch sup­port­er of North Carolina​’s death penal­ty dur­ing his years as a State Senator and who, as a for­mer Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, repeat­ed­ly vot­ed to uphold death sen­tences — has changed his stance on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In a recent piece for The Huffington Post, Lake said he not only sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a State Senator, he​“vig­or­ous­ly advo­cat­ed” for it and​“cast my vote at…

Cert. grant­ed May 26, 2015 as Foster v. HumphreyArgument: Nov. 2, 2015Decided: May…

On May 23, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Timothy Foster (pic­tured) because Georgia pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly exer­cised their dis­cre­tionary jury strikes on the basis of race to exclude African American jurors. The vote was 7 – 1, with Justice Thomas the lone dis­senter. Foster is now entitled to…

Following sev­en months of inves­ti­ga­tion into the caus­es of Oklahoma​’s botched exe­cu­tion of Charles Warner using an unau­tho­rized exe­cu­tion drug and its near-exe­cu­­tion of Richard Glossip with the same wrong drug, an Oklahoma grand jury issued a report on May 19 iden­ti­fy­ing a wide range of what it char­ac­ter­ized as​“neg­li­gent,”​“care­less,” and in some instances​“reck­less” con­duct by state officials…

U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake ruled on May 18 that a lethal injec­tion chal­lenge brought by Arizona death row pris­on­ers may move for­ward, pre­vent­ing Arizona from car­ry­ing out any exe­cu­tions before the report­ed expi­ra­tion date of its sup­ply of a key exe­cu­tion drug. Arizona has said that it is unable to replen­ish its sup­ply of mida­zo­lam, an anti-anx­i­e­ty med­ica­tion that a num­ber of states have used as a seda­tive in mul­ti-drug lethal injection…

One year after the Nebraska leg­is­la­ture vot­ed to repeal the death penal­ty and over­rode a guber­na­to­r­i­al veto of that mea­sure, actions in leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try sug­gest that the state’s efforts sig­nalled a grow­ing move­ment against the death penal­ty by con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors and that sup­port for the death penal­ty among Republican leg­is­la­tors is no longer a giv­en. Reporting in The Washington Post, Amber Phillips writes that Republican…

100 years ago, Jesse Washington, a 17-year-old black farm­hand accused of mur­der­ing his white female employ­er was lynched on the steps of the Waco, Texas cour­t­house (pic­tured), moments after Washington’s tri­al end­ed and only sev­en days after the mur­der had occurred. The grue­some lynch­ing took place in front of law enforce­ment per­son­nel and 15,000 spec­ta­tors, none of whom inter­vened to end the vio­lence. Washington, whom reports indicate may…