Publications & Testimony

Lawyers for Texas death row pris­on­er Robert L. Roberson III have filed a peti­tion ask­ing the United States Supreme Court to review whether Seth Kretzer and James W. Volberding — the same appoint­ed lawyers who were accused of aban­don­ing Raphael Holiday, whom Texas exe­cut­ed in November — had a con­flict of inter­est that inter­fered with Mr. Roberson’s right to an inde­pen­dent legal advo­cate in his fed­er­al habeas corpus…

On Sunday, November 29, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired a seg­ment on Arizona​’s 2‑hour botched exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood (pic­tured). As described by 60 Minutes, Wood’s​“exe­cu­tion with a new cock­tail of drugs was sup­posed to take 10 min­utes. It took almost two hours, the longest exe­cu­tion in U.S. his­to­ry.” On July 23, 2014, Arizona gave Wood 15 con­sec­u­tive dos­es of mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone, the same drug…

Death row exoneree Anthony Graves (pic­tured, right, with Sen. Richard Durbin after tes­ti­fy­ing before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights in 2012) has expe­ri­enced what he calls the​“injus­tice of the jus­tice sys­tem” and is work­ing to make the sys­tem bet­ter. Graves was exon­er­at­ed from death row in Texas in 2010, 16 years after being wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in a mul­ti­ple murder case.

A major­i­ty of Americans pre­fer life with­out parole to the death penal­ty, accord­ing to the 2015 American Values Survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. The poll of 2,695 Americans found that 52% pre­ferred life with­out parole, while 47% pre­ferred the death penal­ty. The poll found that respon­dents’ views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment tracked their views about racial jus­tice and dif­fered great­ly by race. 53% of all Americans agreed with the state­ment,​“A black person is…

Caddo Parish, Louisiana, known nation­al­ly for its aggres­sive pur­suit of the death penal­ty, has elect­ed its first black District Attorney. In a November 21 runoff elec­tion con­duct­ed against the back­drop of con­tro­ver­sial remarks about the death penal­ty by the cur­rent DA and a threat­ened civ­il rights law­suit over sys­temic racial dis­crim­i­na­tion by Caddo Parish pros­e­cu­tors in jury…

A major­i­ty of Oklahoma vot­ers favor abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty if it is replaced with a sen­tence of life with­out parole plus resti­tu­tion, accord­ing to a new poll com­mis­sioned by News 9/​News on 6. The sur­vey by the non-par­ti­san SoonerPoll​.com found that 52.4% of Oklahomans would sup­port abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty if the state replaced its sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment with the alter­na­tive sanc­tion of life without parole,…

Georgia is sched­uled to exe­cute Marcus Johnson (pic­tured) on November 19 despite ongo­ing con­cerns about his inno­cence. The exe­cu­tion would be Georgia’s fifth since December 2014 — each rais­ing seri­ous ques­tions about sys­temic prob­lems in Georgia’s appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty. In a com­men­tary for The Marshall Project, Sara Totonchi, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Southern Center for Human Rights, says these cas­es​“are…

Raphael Holiday (pic­tured) is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on November 18 after appeals lawyers who were appoint­ed to his case uni­lat­er­al­ly decid­ed not to seek clemen­cy or pur­sue addi­tion­al appeals and then opposed Holiday’s efforts to replace them with lawyers who would. James​“Wes” Volberding and Seth Kretzer say that they were unable to find new evi­dence on which to base any appeal and that seek­ing clemen­cy from Texas Gov. Greg…

In light of the FBI’s acknowl­edge­ment in April that flawed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny by its expert hair-com­­par­i­­son ana­lysts had taint­ed at least 268 cas­es, includ­ing 32 death penal­ty cas­es, foren­sic sci­ence is com­ing under increased scruti­ny. A com­men­tary in the Boston Review argues that​“mount­ing hor­ror sto­ries,” includ­ing instances of crime-lab​“cor­rup­tion and dys­func­tion, have cre­at­ed a moment of cri­sis in forensic…

Both exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences in the United States are on pace for sig­nif­i­cant declines to their low­est lev­els in a gen­er­a­tion, Reuters reports. With 25 exe­cu­tions con­duct­ed so far this year, and only two more sched­uled, the United States could have its low­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions since 1991, sig­nif­i­cant­ly below the peak of 98 exe­cu­tions in 1999. Only 8 states have car­ried out exe­cu­tions in the last two years, down from a high of 20, also in 1999. New…