Publications & Testimony

Death-row prisoners and the state of Arizona have reached a tentative settlement to address the state’s lethal-injection protocol. Under the settlement, which could have an impact on lethal-injection litigation across the country, Arizona has dropped a three-drug formula from its protocol in favor of using a high dose of single barbiturate, and will honor a prior commitment not to use the sedative midazolam. The state also agreed not to use any paralytic drug in the execution process — which…

Defense attorneys for Travis Bredhold, a Kentucky defendant facing the death penalty for a murder committed when he was 18 years old, are asking a judge to extend the death-penalty exemption for juvenile offenders to those younger than age 21. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court (pictured) ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penalty was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment when applied to offenders who were under age 18 at the time of the crime. The Court held at that time that a…

Thirty years ago, filmmaker Errol Morris, who directed the documentary “The Thin Blue Line,” helped to exonerate Texas death-row prisoner Dale Adams, falsely accused of murdering a police officer. During the course of making the film, Morris met the notorious Texas prosecution psychiatrist, Dr. James Grigson, who routinely testified that capital defendants — including the innocent Mr. Adams — posed a risk of future dangerousness. Morris recently interviewed Christina Swarns (pictured, center)…

QUESTION PRESENTED: Whether the Fifth Circuit erred in holding that 18 U.S.C. § 3599(f) withholds “reasonably necessary” resources to investigate and develop an ineffective- assistance-of-counsel claim that state habeas counsel forfeited, where the claimant’s existing evidence does not meet the ultimate burden of proof at the time the § 3599(f) motion is made. * * * * * On October 30, the Supreme Court held oral argument in Ayestas v. Davis. The Petitioner, Carlos Ayestas, was convicted and…

Exonerated: A History of the Innocence Movement, by Robert J. Norris, describes the rise of the “innocence movement,” the lawyers, investigators, journalists, lawmakers, and organizations that have worked to uncover wrongful convictions, educate the public about the problem, and reform the criminal justice system to prevent future mistakes. For the book, Norris interviewed 37 key leaders on the issue, including Innocence Project co-founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, and Rob Warden…

An Ohio appeals court heard argument on June 6 on whether to grant a new trial to former death-row prisoner Kevin Keith (pictured), whose death sentence was commuted to life without parole by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland in 2010 amid concerns that he may be innocent. Keith, who has consistently maintained his innocence of the three 1994 murders for which he was sentenced to death, presented argument to the Ohio Court of Appeals for the 3^rd District based on newly discovered evidence that the…

From 2007 to 2013, Dallas sentenced twelve capitally charged defendants to death — more than any other county in Texas — and Dallas ranks second nationally, behind only Harris County (Houston), in the number it has executed since 1972. But the county has not imposed any new death sentences since then, and the recent life sentences in the capital trials of Justin Smith and Erbie Bowser highlight a statewide trend away from the death penalty. Smith was charged with killing three and injuring two…

Robert Melson (pictured), an Alabama death-row prisoner whose clemency petition alleges that abandonment by his post-conviction lawyers prevented him from adequately challenging the flawed forensic evidence in his case, received a stay of execution from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit on a challenge to Alabama’s lethal-injection protocol. Melson was convicted of three murders at a Popeye’s restaurant in 1994. A survivor of the crime recognized one of two assailants as Cuhuatemoc…

The Indiana Court of Appeals has voided the state’s lethal-injection protocol. In a ruling on June 1, 2017, the state intermediate appeals court held that the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC) had failed to comply with state rulemaking procedures when it adopted a never-before-used execution protocol without public notice or comment. In 2014, the DOC announced that it had adopted a new execution protocol “informally as an internal DOC policy.” The protocol called for a three-drug…