Publications & Testimony

Death rows are shrinking nationwide, and the experience in states like Virginia and Pennsylvania helps explain why. Virginia’s death row has fallen from a reported high of 58 in 1995 to four in September 2017, the lowest it has been since 1979. Pennsylvania’s death row of 160 prisoners is its smallest in nearly 25 years — down from 175 last December and from a reported 247 in April 2002. These declines mirror the national trends, as the number of prisoners removed from death row continues to…

For the second time in as many years, Georgia is preparing to execute an intellectually disabled African-American man, despite evidence that the death verdict in his case may have been tainted by a white juror’s profound racial bias. Lawyers for Keith Leroy Tharpe (pictured), whose IQ has been measured in the 60s and whom Georgia has scheduled to be executed on September 26, say the courts should reconsider his case in light of the racial slurs a white juror made about him. They say new U.S.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has issued a ruling reviving a lawsuit brought by Alabama death-row prisoners that challenged the constitutionality of the state’s three-drug execution protocol using the controversial lethal-injection drug midazolam. The unanimous decision by the three-judge federal appeals panel on September 1 reversed a federal district court ruling against several death-row prisoners who sued the Alabama Department of Corrections, alleging that the state’s…

On the third anniversary of their groundbreaking exoneration, a new report by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) reviews in-depth the long path from wrongful convictions and death sentences to freedom traveled by former North Carolina death-row prisoners Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. By the time DNA evidence exonerated the brothers of the 1983 rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie, McCollum had spent 30 years on death row and Brown was serving a life sentence for Buie’s…

Almost all of the 26 men scheduled for execution in Ohio over the next three years suffer from mental, emotional, or cognitive impairments or limitations that raise questions as to whether they should have been sentenced to death, according to a new report released August 30 by Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project. While the U.S. Constitution requires that the death penalty be reserved for the worst crimes and the worst offenders, the report — Prisoners on Ohio’s Execution List Defined by…

The Florida Supreme Court has upheld Governor Rick Scott’s (pictured, left) removal of Orange and Osceola County State Attorney Aramis Ayala (pictured, right) as prosecutor in more than two dozen murder cases because of her official policy not to seek to seek the death penalty. Over two dissents, the seven-member Court held that Scott had acted “well within the bounds of the Governor’s broad authority” when he replaced Ayala with Lake County State Attorney and death-penalty proponent Brad King…

Fifty years ago today, Thurgood Marshall (pictured) was confirmed as the nation’s first African-American Supreme Court Justice. Marshall’s legacy is indelibly linked to his historic victory in 1954 as counsel in Brown v. Board of Education, breaking down the barriers of “separate but equal” segregated public education. But he is equally associated with his representation of capital defendants in racially charged cases in the Jim Crow South and his longstanding belief — first articulated in a…

A Texas appeals court has stayed the August 30 execution of Steven Long (pictured) to provide him an opportunity to litigate a claim that he is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. On August 21, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued the stay and remanded Long’s case to a Dallas County trial court, directing the court to reconsider his claim of intellectual disability in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 2017 ruling in Moore v. Texas. The Texas courts…

Oklahoma will not execute anyone in 2017 and, without an execution protocol in place, cannot seek any execution dates through at least January 2018, marking the longest period of time between executions in the state in the modern era of capital punishment. As part of an agreement in a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s execution procedures, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office may not request execution dates for any prisoner for at least five months after the state adopts a new execution…

In a 5 – 2 decision that left both proponents and opponents of the death penalty declaring victory, the Supreme Court of California has upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 66, a voter initiative intended to speed up death-penalty appeals and executions, but severely limited the scope of its core provisions. In Briggs v. Brown, the court on August 24 sustained portions of the measure that shifted which court will hear capital cases, increased the pool of death-penalty appeal lawyers by…