Publications & Testimony

After a hiatus of 3½ years, Ohio resumed executions on July 26, putting Ronald Phillips (pictured) to death with a three-drug combination of the sedative midazolam, the paralytic drug rocuronium bromide, and the heart-stopping drug potassium chloride. Phillips was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. It was the state’s first execution since the botched execution of Dennis McGuire on January 16, 2014, and the 15^th in the U.S. in 2017. Phillips’ execution is the first of four executions that Ohio has…

Arizona will soon end its policy of automatically and indefinitely incarcerating death-row prisoners in solitary confinement, joining a growing number of states to ease draconian conditions on their state death rows. Arizona’s action is part of a settlement of a federal lawsuit filed against the Department of Corrections (DOC) by death-row prisoner Scott Nordstrom (pictured), which argued that the state’s death-row conditions were unconstitutionally harsh. Nordstrom’s attorney, Sam Kooistra…

Bucks County, Pennsylvania prosecutors have agreed not to seek the death penalty for defendant Cosmo DiNardo (pictured), in exchange for his confession to a quadruple murder, information implicating an accomplice, and information permitting authorities to recover the body of one of the victims. The deal was made quickly — just one week after the beginning of the investigation into the disappearance of the four young men and the discovery of three of the bodies — to end the uncertainty faced by the…

Lawyers for Texas death-row prisoner TaiChin Preyor (pictured), whose prior federal habeas lawyer relied on research from Wikipedia and the guidance of a disbarred lawyer, have filed motions in state and federal courts seeking to stay his scheduled July 27 execution. His pleadings allege that he was represented by a succession of inept counsel, including a penalty-phase lawyer who failed to interview key witness or seek critical mental health testing; a post-conviction lawyer who met him for…

The Chairman of a state task force to reform Ohio’s death penalty and two former state Attorney Generals have joined a diverse coalition of public officials, death-row exonerees, family members of murder victims, former corrections officials, and religious leaders urging Ohio Governor John Kasich to halt the state’s planned resumption of executions. Citing legislative inaction on critical reforms, the high risk of error, and botched executions, the groups held a press conference (pictured) on…

A new generation of prosecutors, elected across the country on a platform of criminal justice reform, are taking a different approach to criminal justice policies than their predecessors, including a reduction in the use of capital punishment. A Christian Science Monitor profile of these prosecutors — focusing on Mark Gonzalez (pictured), the Nueces County, Texas, district attorney — says “[f]rom Texas to Florida to Illinois, many of these young prosecutors are eschewing the death penalty, talking…

Utah is not providing sufficient funding to competently represent death-row prisoners during their appeals, according to a motion filed on behalf of Douglas Lovell, the man most recently sentenced to death in the state. Because of that, Lovell’s lawyer Samuel Newton says, Lovell’s death sentence should be vacated and he should be resentenced to life in prison. Newton bases his claim on a 2008 Utah Supreme Court opinion, Archuleta v. Galetka, in which the court warned that “low levels of public…

Four counties that rank among the most aggressive users of capital punishment in the United States have prolonged patterns of prosecutorial misconduct, according to a new report by the Harvard-based Fair Punishment Project. The report, “The Recidivists: Four Prosecutors Who Repeatedly Violate the Constitution,” examined state appellate court decisions in California, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee from 2010 – 2015, and found that prosecutors in Orange County, CA; Orleans Parish, LA; St. Louis…

The legacies of Scharlette Holdman (pictured) and Marie Deans — two women who changed the landscape of capital punishment in the United States — are memorialized in a recent story in the Marshall Project and a new book scheduled for release in August. Maurice Chammah’s article, We Saw Monsters. She Saw Humans, marks the July 12, 2017 passing of mitigation pioneer Scharlette Holdman and tells the story of her forty-year fight on behalf of capital defendants and death-row prisoners. The forthcoming…

The number of prisoners on Florida’s death row is now lower than it was on June 30, 2005, as the pace of death sentencing slows and courts reverse the unconstitutional non-unanimous death sentences by which numerous capital defendants had been condemned. Applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling in Hurst v. Florida and subsequent Florida Supreme Court decisions in Hurst v. State and Perry v. State, state courts declared unconstitutional Florida’s practice of permitting trial judges to…