Publications & Testimony

South Dakota state Senator Arthur Rusch (R‑Vermillion, pic­tured), a for­mer tri­al court judge who presided over a cap­i­tal tri­al in which a defen­dant was sen­tenced to death, said he will be intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion next year to repeal the state’s death penal­ty. Rusch said he sup­ports repeal because of the emo­tion­al toll of cap­i­tal tri­als on juri­ors and because of the finan­cial impact of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. As a for­mer Lincoln County cir­cuit court judge, Rusch presided over the…

Recent court deci­sions in cas­es from Georgia and Arkansas reflect con­tin­u­ing judi­cial uncer­tain­ty regard­ing lethal injec­tion secre­cy. On October 12, an Arkansas tri­al court over­turned the state’s exe­cu­tion secre­cy law and ordered the state Department of Corrections to dis­close the drugs that it intends to use in exe­cu­tions and the source of those drugs. In a December 3 opin­ion requir­ing dis­clo­sure by the fol­low­ing day, Pulaski County Circuit…

“[E]lectoral pres­sures influ­ence judges’ deci­sions in cap­i­tal cas­es,” accord­ing to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. That report, How Judicial Elections Impact Criminal Cases, sur­veyed numer­ous empir­i­cal stud­ies that had reviewed the effects of judi­cial elec­tions on out­comes in crim­i­nal cas­es. The vast major­i­ty of crim­i­nal defen­dants — includ­ing cap­i­tal defen­dants — face elect­ed judges at tri­al and on appeal. According…

Historical trends in exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences close­ly track changes in pub­lic atti­tudes about the death penal­ty and crime in gen­er­al, accord­ing to a com­pre­hen­sive University of North Carolina analy­sis of nation­al pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys on the death…

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled 4 – 3 on November 24 to vacate the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Reginald (Reggie) Clemons (pic­tured), who has been on death row for 22 years for the inter­ra­cial rape and mur­der of two sis­ters. The court said that Clemons, did not receive a fair tri­al because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. In par­tic­u­lar, the court was trou­bled by what it con­clud­ed was a delib­er­ate fail­ure by pros­e­cu­tiors to pro­vide Clemons’ defense with evi­dence that he had…

UPDATE: Terrell was denied clemen­cy on Dec. 7 and exe­cut­ed just before 1:00 a.m. on December 9. The Atlanta Journal Constitution report­ed that it took a nurse an hour to find a vein for the lethal injec­tion IV and that, as the exe­cu­tion drug was being admin­is­tered, Terrell mouthed the words: ​“Didn’t do it.” EARLIER: After three tri­als, Georgia is set to exe­cute Brian Keith Terrell (pic­tured) on December 8, unless the Georgia Board of…

The coun­ties in the United States that have the high­est per capi­ta rate of killings by police offi­cers also rank among the high­est in the coun­try in the num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death. In his crim­i­nal jus­tice blog, ​“The Watch,” for the Washington Post, Radley Balko details the ​“remark­able cor­re­la­tion” between killings by police and death sentences…

Terry Williams was bare­ly 18 when he killed Amos Norwood, a man who had been sex­u­al­ly abus­ing him since Williams was…

Donnis Musgrove (pic­tured), an Alabama death row pris­on­er with a sub­stan­tial claim of inno­cence, died of lung can­cer on Alabama’s death row on November 25, while his case was pend­ing before a fed­er­al judge. Musgrove’s attor­neys had asked U.S. District Judge David Proctor to rule quick­ly because of Musgrove’s med­ical con­di­tion. Musgrove and his co-defen­dant, David Rogers, who pre­vi­ous­ly died on Alabama’s death row, were sen­tenced to death in 1988. Rogers’ lawyer, Tommy Nail -…

Capital mur­der indict­ments have plum­met­ed and life sen­tences risen sharply in Ohio over the past five years, accord­ing to a report by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The news­pa­per’s exam­i­na­tion of Ohio prison and oth­er pub­lic records revealed that cap­i­tal indict­ments in the state have dropped by 77% since 2010, mir­ror­ing nation­al trends. Prosecutors are far more like­ly to seek a sen­tence of life with­out parole in cas­es in which they once would have pur­sued the death penal­ty. The paper…