Publications & Testimony

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…

Mark White (official portrait, pictured), a former governor and attorney general of Texas who became an outspoken critic of the death penalty, died on August 5 at the age of 77. Mr. White served as governor from 1983 to 1987, during which time he oversaw 19 executions. In an unsuccessful comeback bid in 1990, a campaign ad touted his strong support for the death penalty, featuring photos of the men executed during his tenure as governor and declaring, “Only a governor can make executions…

A Kentucky trial court has declared the death penalty unconstitutional when applied against defendants charged with offenses committed while they were younger than age 21. Fayette County Circuit Judge Ernesto Scorsone’s ruling bars the Commonwealth’s prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against Travis Bredhold (pictured), who was age 18 years and five months at the time of the 2013 murder and robbery of a gas station attendant. The decision extends the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling in…

A Cobb County, Georgia trial court has declared a severely mentally ill capital defendant incompetent to stand trial and committed him to a state mental hospital, effectively ending prosecutors’ seven-year efforts to obtain the death penalty in his case. Jesse James Warren (pictured) was facing trial and a possible death sentence for killing four men and wounding another in 2010 at a Penske Truck Rental store where he had previously worked. The shooting spree was allegedly motivated by Warren’s…

In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, released online in July, Ben Jones argues that, despite the popular conception of death-penalty abolition as a politically progressive cause, its future success may well depend upon building support among Republicans and political conservatives. In The Republican Party, Conservatives, and the Future of Capital Punishment, Jones — the Assistant Director of Rock Ethics Institute at Pennsylvania State University — traces the…

South Carolina prosecutors announced on July 25 that they would not appeal a trial court ruling, granting a new, non-capital trial to former death-row prisoner Kenneth Simmons (pictured). Finding that prosecutors had presented false DNA testimony that “severely deprived” Simmons of his due process rights, a Dorchester County Circuit Judge overturned Simmons’s conviction. Simmons had been sentenced to death for the 1996 sexual assault and murder of an elderly woman based on false and misleading…

The American Bar Association has released a new publication, The State of Criminal Justice 2017, an annual report examining major issues, trends, and significant changes in America’s criminal justice system. In a chapter devoted to capital punishment, Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, describes significant death penalty cases and developments over the past year. Tabak reports on historic declines in new death…

Cert. granted: January 13, 2017 Argument: April 24, 2017 (Read the Transcript) Decided: June 26, 2017 (Opinion) On June 26, 2017, the Supreme Court (5 – 4) denied relief to Texas death-row prisoner, Erick Daniel Davila, declining to extend the equitable rule announced in Martinez v. Ryan (2011) to claims of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel. The question presented, as stated in the merits brief filed by Petitioner is as follows: Whether the rule established in Martinez v. Ryan and…

A Nebraska trial judge has permitted Patrick Schroeder (pictured) — whose lawyers from the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy had challenged the constitutionality of the state’s death penalty — to fire his lawyers, withdraw the challenge, and plead guilty to first-degree murder. The court deferred until August 22 whether to also permit Schroeder to waive his right to have a jury decide whether aggravating circumstance exist that could make him eligible for the death penalty. The court…