Publications & Testimony

Velma Barfield in North Carolina on November 2, 1984 — She was in a rela­tion­ship with Stuart Taylor who was a wid­ow­er. She forged checks on Taylor’s account to pay for her addic­tion. Fearing that she had been found out, she mixed an arsenic based rat poi­son into his beer and tea. Taylor became very ill. As his con­di­tion wors­ened, she took him to the hos­pi­tal where he died a few days lat­er. There was an autop­sy which found that the cause of Taylor’s death was…

(source: M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smylka,​“Executions in the U.S. 1608 – 1987: The Espy File.” (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1994) with recent…

Per Capita State Execution Rates — — — — — — — — — — — - *Death penal­ty abol­ished. Population based on 2024 US Census Estimate Data. Executions: Total since resump­tion of the death penal­ty in the U.S. in 1972 after the U.S. Supreme Court declared exist­ing statutes uncon­sti­tu­tion­al through 2024. Executions per Death Sentence — — — — — — — — — – Executions based on DPI Execution Database. Death Sentences from Bureau of Justice Statistics, Capital Punishment…

Donnis MusgroveAlabama: Conviction, 1988; Died on Death Row, 2015David RogersAlabama: Conviction, 1988; Died on Death…

In 1997, a St. Louis County, Missouri jury unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to sen­tence David Barnett to death. Eighteen years lat­er, after learn­ing hor­rif­ic details of the phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse to which Barnett had been sub­ject­ed as a small child, Andrew Dazey — the jury fore­man in Barnett’s tri­al — says “[t]here’s no way” he would have vot­ed for death. At tri­al, Barnett’s lawyer pre­sent­ed some evi­dence of his clien­t’s abuse, men­tal ill­ness, and suicide…

Prosecutors across the coun­try are seek­ing the death penal­ty less fre­quent­ly and in recent inter­views two dis­trict attor­neys, one from Texas and one from Pennsylvania, have giv­en some of their rea­sons why. Randall County, Texas District Attorney James Farren (pic­tured) told KFDA-TV in Amarillo that his expe­ri­ence han­dling one par­tic­u­lar­ly lengthy and cost­ly cap­i­tal case has changed how he will make deci­sions in future…

For the third time in two years, the Delaware Supreme Court has reversed the con­vic­tion of a death row inmate because his tri­al was taint­ed by prosecutorial…

Although Georgia car­ried out 5 of the 28 exe­cu­tions in the U.S. in 2015, it imposed no new death sen­tences and a sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed legal land­scape points to a​“new Georgia” with the death penal­ty in decline. The Georgia legal pub­li­ca­tion, Daily Report, dubbed the decline in death sen­tences its​“news­mak­er of the year,” and explored the reasons…

In a unan­i­mous deci­sion issued December 21, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld Gov. Tom Wolf’s (pic­tured) impo­si­tion of a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while he awaits the results of a leg­isla­tive com­mis­sion’s report on Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty. On February 13, 2015, Wolf issued a tem­po­rary reprieve to Terrance Williams and announced that he would put all exe­cu­tions on hold. At that time, he said that Pennsylvania’s…

The North Carolina Supreme Court has reversed the his­toric rul­ings of a Cumberland County, N.C. tri­al court that had over­turned the death sen­tences of four North Carolina death-row pris­on­ers under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Ruling entire­ly on pro­ce­dur­al grounds, the state’s high court expressed no opin­ion on the low­er court’s fact find­ings that North Carolina pros­e­cu­tors had engaged in a decades-long prac­tice of inten­tion­al race dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selection…