Publications & Testimony

Harris County, Texas pros­e­cu­tors announced on June 8 that they have dis­missed charges against Alfred Dewayne Brown, who had been sen­tenced to death in 2005 for the mur­ders of a Houston police offi­cer and a store clerk dur­ing a rob­bery. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had over­turned Brown’s con­vic­tion last year because pros­e­cu­tors with­held a phone record that sup­port­ed Brown’s ali­bi. Prosecutors in 2013 said that the phone record had been inadvertently…

With lethal injec­tion in admin­is­tra­tive cri­sis and fac­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges, some states are look­ing towards abo­li­tion and oth­ers towards alter­na­tive meth­ods of…

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory grant­ed par­dons to Leon Brown (l.) and Henry McCollum (cen­ter, r.), allow­ing the two men to receive com­pen­sa­tion for their wrong­ful con­vic­tions. Brown and McCollum are half-broth­ers who were con­vict­ed of the 1983 mur­der of an 11-year-old girl and sen­tenced to death. McCollum spent 30 years on death row before being exon­er­at­ed by DNA evi­dence in 2014. Brown was released after 30 years in jail, eight of them…

A new poll by Quinnipiac has found that more Americans pre­fer life with­out parole (48%) than the death penal­ty (43%) for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der. Since Quinnipiac last asked the ques­tion in 2013, sup­port for life with­out parole has risen by five per­cent­age points and dropped for the death penal­ty by five points. A June 2014 ABC News/​Washington Post poll also showed that more Americans pre­ferred life with­out parole to the death penal­ty. Quinnipiac found that 58% of…

UPDATE: Bower was exe­cut­ed as sched­uled. EARLIER: Lester Bower is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on June 3, after spend­ing more than 30 years on death row. Judges have denied relief on sev­er­al issues raised by Bower, includ­ing a claim that pros­e­cu­tors had with­held evi­dence from the defense sup­port­ing Bower’s con­sis­tent asser­tion that he is inno­cent. Bower was con­vict­ed of the 1983 mur­der of four men in Grayson County, Texas. He says he met with one of the…

In a cov­er sto­ry for TIME Magazine, award-win­ning jour­nal­ist and TIME edi­tor-at-large David Von Drehle explores the decline of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. Von Drehle offers five sig­nif­i­cant rea­sons for the drop in death sen­tences, exe­cu­tions, and pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty in the United States. First, he cites per­sis­tent prob­lems with the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty: botched exe­cu­tions and a lengthy appeals process that fails to identify…

California Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals (pic­tured) dis­qual­i­fied the entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office from pros­e­cut­ing a death penal­ty case after find­ing that pros­e­cu­tors had engaged in a sys­temic pat­tern of police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct involv­ing the delib­er­ate, but undis­closed, use of prison infor­mants to obtain incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments from defen­dants. None of the 250 pros­e­cu­tors in the office are now per­mit­ted to par­tic­i­pate in the case.

In his col­umn for TIME Magazine, bas­ket­ball hall of famer, author, and film­mak­er Kareem Abdul-Jabbar broad­ly explores the state of the death penal­ty In the United States and con­cludes that life with­out parole is the bet­ter option for American soci­ety. Stating that “[t]he pri­ma­ry pur­pose of the death penal­ty is to pro­tect the inno­cent,” Abdul-Jabar notes that there is a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between the death penal­ty’s goal in the­o­ry and its appli­ca­tion in prac­tice. ​“While…

The Nebraska leg­is­la­ture vot­ed 30 – 19 to over­ride the veto of Governor Pete Ricketts and abol­ish the death penal­ty. Nebraska becomes the 19^th state to repeal the death penal­ty, and the 7^th state to do so since 2007. It is the first pre­dom­i­nant­ly Republican state to abol­ish the death penal­ty in over 40 years, and state leg­is­la­tors said Republican sup­port was crit­i­cal to the bipar­ti­san repeal effort. Sen. Jeremy Nordquist said, ​“This would­n’t have hap­pened with­out the fiscally…