Publications & Testimony

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…

Three quar­ters of American exe­cu­tions in 2015 involved cas­es of​“crip­pling dis­abil­i­ties and uncer­tain guilt,” accord­ing to a report by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University. Saying that the 2015 exe­cu­tions revealed​“a bro­ken cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem,” the report found that, “[o]f the 28 peo­ple exe­cut­ed [in 2015], 75% were men­tal­ly impaired or dis­abled, expe­ri­enced extreme child­hood trau­ma or abuse, or were of…

In August 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act, becom­ing the sec­ond state to allow courts to con­sid­er sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence as proof of racial bias in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. As ini­tial­ly writ­ten, the North Carolina law per­mit­ted a judge to over­turn a death sen­tence or pre­vent pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing the death penal­ty in an indi­vid­ual case upon proof of racial bias. Governor Beverly Purdue, who signed the act into law,…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit has ruled in favor of Kevan Brumfield, uphold­ing the deci­sion of a Louisiana fed­er­al dis­trict court that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. Louisiana’s state courts had ini­tial­ly denied Brumfield resources to inves­ti­gate evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and then dis­missed his case with­out an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, find­ing that he had not…