Publications & Testimony

Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld new­ly enact­ed death penal­ty statutes in Gregg v. Georgia and two oth­er cas­es, Professor Evan J. Mandery of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice says arbi­trari­ness con­tin­ues to plague the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment across the United States. In a piece for The Marshall Project, Professor Mandery revis­its the death penal­ty in light of the con­sti­tu­tion­al defects that led the Supreme Court to…

According to a report by Raw Story, two recent exe­cu­tions may have irrepara­bly impaired efforts by sev­er­al pris­on­ers to prove their inno­cence, pre­vent­ing them from pre­sent­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from poten­tial alter­nate sus­pects. Rodney Lincoln was con­vict­ed of the 1982 mur­der of JoAnn Tate and assault­ing her two young daugh­ters and was sen­tenced to two life terms. The pri­ma­ry evi­dence against him was the tes­ti­mo­ny of Melissa Davis, Tate’s eight-year-old daughter…

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles announced on March 31 that it had denied clemen­cy to Joshua Bishop. Bishop had asked that his death sen­tence be reduced to life with­out parole because his co-defen­­dant, who was near­ly twice Bishop’s age at the time of the crime, and had a his­to­ry of vio­lent crime while Bishop did not, was giv­en a plea deal result­ing in a life sen­tence. Bishop is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Georgia on March 31. Seven of…

A group of promi­nent Oklahomans have announced the cre­ation of a 12-mem­ber Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive review of the state’s death penal­ty. The all-vol­un­­teer com­mis­sion will be led by three co-chairs, for­mer Governor Brad Henry (pic­tured), retired Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Reta Strubhar, and for­mer U.S. Magistrate…

In one week, courts in unre­lat­ed cas­es have grant­ed relief to two Alabama death row inmates because of prosecutorial…

In an inter­view with The Marshall Project, Texas death penal­ty juror Sven Berger says he would not have vot­ed to sen­tence cap­i­tal defen­dant Paul Storey to death in 2008 had he known about Storey’s​“bor­der­line intel­lec­tu­al func­tion­ing,” his­to­ry of depres­sion, and oth­er evi­dence that Storey’s lawyer failed to present at tri­al. Berger and 11 oth­er Texas jurors unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to sen­tence Storey to death, but…

A South Carolina fed­er­al dis­trict court has vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on Johnny Bennett, an African-American defen­dant con­demned by an all-white jury after pros­e­cu­tor Donald Myers (pic­tured) had​“made mul­ti­ple state­ments clear­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to excite the jury with racial imagery…

Cole County, Missouri Circuit Judge Jon Beetem ruled on March 21 that Missouri must release the names of phar­ma­cies that have pro­vid­ed lethal injec­tion drugs for exe­cu­tions. Judge Beetem ruled in favor of the ACLU of Missouri and sev­er­al media orga­ni­za­tions that had filed three sep­a­rate suits against the state. The media plain­tiffs includ­ed the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Kansas City Star, the Springfield…

American Bar Association President Paulette Brown has sent a let­ter to California Govenor Jerry Brown urg­ing him to grant a reprieve to death row inmate Kevin Cooper to per­mit a full inves­ti­ga­tion of Cooper’s pos­si­ble inno­cence. The ABA President wrote:​“Mr. Cooper’s arrest, pros­e­cu­tion, and con­vic­tion are marred by evi­dence of racial bias, police mis­con­duct, evi­dence tam­per­ing, sup­pres­sion of excul­pa­to­ry infor­ma­tion, lack of…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit says that​“Adam Kelly Ward (pic­tured) has been afflict­ed with men­tal ill­ness his entire life.” Yet Texas will exe­cute him on March 22 unless the U.S. Supreme Court grants him a stay to review his case. Ward’s lawyers argue that the exe­cu­tion of a per­son who is severe­ly men­tal­ly ill con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment and that, for that rea­son, Ward should not be exe­cut­ed. The Texas Court…