Publications & Testimony

On April 20, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe commuted the death sentence of Ivan Teleguz (pictured), whom the Commonwealth had scheduled to be executed on April 25. Teleguz will now serve a sentence of life without parole. It was the first death-penalty clemency ever issued by Gov. McAuliffe. The official statement released to the media in conjunction with the commutation outlined several of the factors that influenced the Governor’s decision, including the prosecution’s use of false evidence…

In 1949, Norma Padgett, a white 17-year-old, falsely accused four young black men in Groveland, Florida of kidnapping and raping her. Nearly 70 years later, the state of Florida is apologizing to the families of the “Groveland Four,” two of whom were murdered and two of whom were wrongly sentenced to death. After the false accusations, enraged white residents of Lake County went on a violent rampage, shooting at and burning the homes of black residents. The Governor sought help from the…

Two Arkansas death-row prisoners who are scheduled be executed on April 20 have asked the Arkansas courts to stay their executions to permit DNA testing in their cases. Stacey Johnson (pictured, l.) and Ledell Lee (pictured, r.) both say they did not commit the crimes for which they were sentenced to death, and both say that DNA testing methods not available at the time of their trials could prove their innocence. Stacey Johnson was convicted of the 1993 rape and murder of Carol Jean Heath.

Caddo Parish, Louisiana prosecutors formally dropped charges against Rodricus Crawford (pictured) on April 17, exonerating him in a controversial death penalty case that had attracted national attention amid evidence of race discrimination, prosecutorial excess, and actual innocence. He is the 158^th person exonerated from death row in the United States since 1973. Crawford was convicted in 2012 and sentenced to death on charges he had murdered his one-year-old son. Crawford’s appellate…

In legal challenges filed separately by Arkansas death-row prisoners and a company involved in the distribution of pharmaceuticals, the Arkansas state and federal courts issued preliminary injunctions putting on hold the state’s plan to carry out an unprecedented eight executions in the span of eleven days. After a four-day evidentiary hearing that ended late in the evening on Thursday, April 13, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas issued a preliminary…

Amid mounting concerns that Virginia may execute an innocent man on April 25, a diverse group of religious, political, and business leaders are calling on Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to grant clemency to Ivan Teleguz (pictured). Their pleas for clemency stress that Teleguz was convicted based upon highly unreliable testimony and sentenced to death based upon false testimony that he had been involved in a fabricated Pennsylvania murder that had, in fact, never occurred. Teleguz was…

In 1986, James McWilliams (pictured), an indigent defendant, was sentenced to death by a judge in Alabama after being denied access to an independent expert who could have helped the defense understand and present his mental health issues. On April 24, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court will hold oral argument in McWilliams v. Dunn. The question before the Court is whether, when the Supreme Court held in Ake v. Oklahoma (1985) that an indigent defendant is entitled to meaningful expert assistance for…

A new poll of voters in Orange and Osceola counties in Florida — taken in the wake of Governor Rick Scott’s removal of their locally elected State Attorney Aramis Ayala (pictured) from 22 homicide cases after she announced that her office would not pursue the death penalty — shows that the counties’ voters overwhelmingly prefer the use of life imprisonment over the death penalty as punishment for murder. The poll by Public Policy Polling, released on April 10, found that 62% of Orange and Osceola…

Three Louisiana legislators, all of them former law enforcement officials, have proposed legislation to abolish the state’s death penalty. Sen. Dan Claitor (R‑Baton Rouge, pictured), a former New Orleans prosecutor who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is the primary author of Senate Bill 142, which would eliminate the death penalty for offenses committed on or after August 1, 2017. The bill’s counterpart in the House of Representatives, House Bill 101, is sponsored by Rep. Terry Landry…

Executions worldwide fell by 37% in 2016, according to the annual Amnesty International Global Report on Death Sentences and Executions, released on April 11, 2017. With 20 executions in 2016, the United States ranked seventh in the world among confirmed executions, the lowest it has ranked since at least 2005. For the 8^th consecutive year, the U.S. was the only country in the Americas to conduct any executions, and the only Western democracy in the world to do so. Amnesty International…