Publications & Testimony

As the Florida legislature considers a bill that would change Florida’s “Clean Hands” policy, which denies compensation for wrongful convictions if the defendant had a prior felony record, Alabama lawmakers are deciding whether to grant compensation to Anthony Ray Hinton (pictured), who was exonerated in 2015 after spending nearly 30 years on death row. In Florida, death row exoneree Herman Lindsey told the Senate Criminal Justice Committee about his having been denied compensation because of…

Texas capital murder exoneree Christopher Scott (pictured) has urged Dallas County’s new District Attorney, Faith Johnson, to drop the death penalty from murder charges pending against Erbie Bowser. Bowser, who is black, is a seriously mentally ill Marine veteran who was discharged from military service after having been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He faces four capital charges in the killings of his girlfriend, his estranged wife, and their daughters. When police found him…

The costs of the death penalty are more than financial, they are emotional; and these effects are felt not just by the parties to the trial and the families of victims and defendants, but by the jurors as well. A recent report in the Akron Beacon Journal describes the traumatic psychological impact serving in the Summit County, Ohio death penalty trial of Eric Hendon had on the jurors in that case. After a three-month trial and capital-sentencing hearing, the jury found Hendon guilty of a 2013…

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed orders on February 27 for an unprecedented eight executions to be carried out over a period of eleven days in April. The scheduled dates for the four sets of double executions are: April 17, Bruce Ward and Don Davis; April 20, Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee; April 24, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams; and April 27, Kenneth Williams and Jason McGehee. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge asked that the dates be set after the U.S. Supreme Court on…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the conviction and death sentence of Tennessee death-row prisoner Andrew Lee Thomas, Jr. on February 24, ruling that Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich had unconstitutionally withheld evidence that a key prosecution witness had been paid for her cooperation in the case and then elicited perjured testimony from the witness lying about the payment. Weirich is currently facing ethical charges from the Tennessee Board of…

Human Rights Magazine, a quarterly publication by the American Bar Association, focused its first-quarter 2017 edition on capital punishment, marking the 40^th anniversary of Gregg v. Georgia. Articles by nationally-renowned death penalty experts examine geographic disparities in death sentences, secrecy and lethal injection, intellectual disability, mental illness, and other critical questions in the current discourse around the death penalty. In the introduction to the magazine, Seth Miller…

In an expansion of their stance opposing nurse participation in executions, the American Nurses Association (ANA) announced on February 21, 2017 that the organization now for the first time opposes capital punishment itself. “Capital punishment is a human rights violation, and ANA is proud to stand in strong opposition to the death penalty,” ANA President Pamela F. Cipriano said. “All human beings, regardless of their crimes, should be treated with dignity. For those states where capital…

Saying that the “law punishes people for what they do, not who they are,” the Supreme Court on February 22, 2017, granted relief to Duane Buck (pictured, right), a Texas death-row prisoner who was sentenced to death after his own lawyer presented testimony from a psychologist who told the jury Buck was more likely to commit future acts of violence because he is black. Writing for the six-Justice majority, Chief Justice Roberts (pictured, left) said that “[d]ispensing punishment on the basis of…

In a retreat from one of its prior decisions, the Florida Supreme Court ruled on February 20 that prosecutors could move forward with death penalty trials under Florida’s constitutionally flawed capital sentencing statute, provided the trial court specifically instructs the sentencing jurors that they must unanimously find all facts that could make a defendant eligible for the death penalty and that they must unanimously recommend death before the trial judge may impose a death sentence. In…