Publications & Testimony

Calling a sentence of death “the ultimate, permanent punishment,” Missouri Governor Eric Greitens (pictured) has stayed the execution of Marcellus Williams “in light of new information” that Williams’s lawyers say demonstrate he is innocent of the murder of former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Felisha Gayle. Hours before Williams’s scheduled August 22 execution, Greitens issued an executive order that granted Williams a stay and created a Board of Inquiry to review “newly discovered DNA…

Citing “relentless non-compliance” with court orders and “chronic obstructionism” by a prosecution team it says “has effectively compromised” Scott Dekraai’s rights to due process and a fair penalty trial, a California trial court has barred prosecutors from pursuing the death penalty in the worst mass killing in Orange County history. In a scathing opinion on August 18, Judge Thomas M. Goethals (pictured) — who had disqualified the entire Orange County District Attorney’s office from the case…

The states of Arkansas and Nevada have announced that they have obtained new supplies of execution drugs that will permit them to carry out two executions in what critics have called questionable circumstances. On August 4, Arkansas obtained a supply of midazolam — the controversial drug used in botched executions in at least four states — paying $250 in cash to an undisclosed supplier for 40 vials of the drug. Then, on August 17, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge asked Governor Asa Hutchinson to…

Merck Chief Executive Officer Kenneth C. Frazier (pictured) resigned from the president’s American Manufacturing Council on August 14, saying “[a]s CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” In a statement posted on Merck’s Twitter account, Frazier said: “Our country’s strength stems from its diversity and the contributions made by men and women of different faiths, races, sexual orientations and political…

After having previously granted Marcellus Williams (pictured) a stay of execution in 2015 to permit DNA testing in his case, the Missouri Supreme Court on August 15 summarily denied him a new execution stay, despite recently obtained results of that testing that support his innocence claim. Williams — who was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 by a nearly all-white St. Louis County jury in the highly publicized stabbing death of a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter — presented…

An Arizona death-row prisoner has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of the state’s capital punishment statute, arguing that Arizona’s sentencing scheme “utterly fails” the constitutionally required task of limiting the death penalty to the worst crimes and worst offenders. On August 15, 2017, lawyers for Abel Daniel Hidalgo (pictured) wrote that a study of more than a decade’s worth of murder cases from Maricopa County, where Hidalgo was tried, showed that…

A group of more than 100 rabbis from multiple Jewish denominations have issued a statement expressing their opposition to the use of the death penalty in the United States. The statement, posted by Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz (pictured) in Forward.com’s Scribe — a curated contributor network of Jewish thought — called for an end to the “cruel practice” of capital punishment and “for the beginning of a new paradigm of fair, equitable restorative justice.” The rabbis said that “[a]s Jews and…

In a decision that could have broad impact on the state’s death row, the Florida Supreme Court on August 10 upheld the death sentence imposed on James Hitchcock, despite his having been unconstitutionally sentenced to death. In a 6 – 1 ruling, the court said it would not enforce its 2016 ruling in Hurst v. State — which declared unconstitutional any death sentence imposed after one or more sentencing jurors had voted that a life sentence was the appropriate punishment — in cases that had completed…

A federal appeals court in Washington has ordered the recusal of a military judge from hearing an appeal in the Guantánamo military commission death penalty trial of five defendants accused of direct responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. A unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on August 8 that Judge Scott L. Silliman of the United States Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) was disqualified from participating in appeals…

A federal appeals court has vacated the conviction and death sentence of Patrick Dwayne Murphy (pictured), a Native-American death-row prisoner in Oklahoma from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, holding that the state lacked authority to try him for a murder that occurred within the borders of the Creek Reservation. On August 8, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit sided with Murphy and Native American friend-of-the-court advocates in designating a region…