Publications & Testimony

After receiving evidence during a five-day hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael R. Merz ruled on January 26 that Ohio’s lethal injection process will create a substantial and objectively intolerable risk of serious harm in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Based on that ruling, the court issued a preliminary injunction staying the executions of Ronald Phillips, Raymond Tibbetts, and Gary Otte. Ohio has not conducted an execution since January 2014, when it used a combination of the drugs…

Alleging wrongful prosecution, Texas death row prisoner Terry Edwards (pictured), who is scheduled for execution on January 26, is seeking a stay of execution and an opportunity to present new evidence that his case was tainted by racially-discriminatory jury selection, prosecutorial misconduct, and false and misleading forensic testimony. Edwards was prosecuted by Dallas County assistant district attorney Thomas D’Amore, who, the defense says, was lead prosecutor in at least three other cases…

Lethal injection as practiced in U.S. executions ​“is an impersonation of medicine populated by real doctors who don’t acknowledge the deception,” Dr. Joel Zivot (pictured), an anesthesiologist and associate professor of anesthesiology at Emory University School of Medicine, writes in an op-ed for CNN. Setting aside the question of the rightness or wrongness of capital punishment itself, he says, ​“it’s time to reject lethal injection” as the method of execution. Dr. Zivot’s op-ed describes how…

A Texas Court of Appeals ruled on January 19, 2017 that all charges against Jerry Hartfield should be dismissed with prejudice after the state had kept the intellectually disabled former death row prisoner in prison for 32 years without retrying him after his conviction had been overturned. Calling the situation a ​“criminal judicial nightmare,” the court ruled that the three-decade delay in trying Hartfield violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial. Hartfield had been convicted and…

Isaiah McCoy (pictured), a former Delaware death row inmate, was exonerated on January 19, 2017, when a judge acquitted him at a retrial. He is the 157^th person exonerated from death row in the United States, the first in 2017, and the first in Delaware. McCoy was convicted and sentenced to death in 2012, but the Delaware Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2015 as a result of prosecutorial misconduct and ordered a new trial. The Court suspended Deputy Attorney General R. David Favata…

Inspired by the case of Robin ​“Rocky” Myers (pictured), an intellectually disabled and possibly innocent Alabama death row prisoner whom an elected state judge sentenced to death despite a 9 – 3 jury recommendation for life, a panel of faith leaders gathered in Montgomery, Alabama to discuss religious views on the death penalty and the intersection of faith and justice. Before the discussion began, the faith leaders and the audience viewed a screening of a new documentary on Myers’ case…

On January 17, 2017, President Barack Obama (pictured) commuted the death sentences of Abelardo Arboleda Ortiz, a federal death row prisoner, and Dwight Loving, a military death row prisoner. The two men were among 209 commutations and 64 pardons announced by the White House on the 17^th. Ortiz’s lawyers sought clemency from the President on the grounds that Ortiz was intellectually disabled, his right to consular notification under the Vienna Convention had been violated, he did not himself…

With the support of a bipartisan group of state officials and legislators, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson (pictured) and Governor Jay Inslee have proposed legislation to repeal the state’s death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life without parole. At a news conference announcing the bill, Ferguson, a Democrat, was joined by former Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, in calling for abolition. The bill will be sponsored by Republican Senator Mark Miloscia and…

Ricky Gray (pictured), who is scheduled to be executed on January 18, is seeking clemency from Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, and his clemency petition has been joined by a diverse group of mental health professionals and the Virginia Catholic Conference. A letter signed by more than 50 mental health professionals, including two former commissioners of the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, urges McAuliffe to commute Gray’s sentence because of Gray’s…

Nearly two-thirds of death row prisoners in five Florida counties whose cases were studied by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project suffer from serious mental impairments. According to a report released by the project on January 12, 2017, the Florida Supreme Court’s December 2016 ruling in Mosley v. State requires reconsideration of the sentences imposed on approximately 150 people on Florida’s death row who were sentenced to death after the U.S. Supreme Court decided RIng v. Arizona in…