Publications & Testimony

Prosecutors in Augusta, Georgia are seeking the death penalty against a man accused of murdering the Rev. Rene Robert (pictured), despite their knowledge that the Franciscan priest had requested that the death penalty not be used “under any circumstances” if he were killed. On January 31, Catholic Bishops from Georgia and Florida traveled to Augusta to meet with Hank Sims, the acting district attorney for the Augusta Judicial Circuit, asking him to respect Reverend Robert’s wishes and to…

A BuzzFeed News investigation reports that Texas sought to import execution drugs from a supplier in India that the Indian Narcotics Control Bureau shut down for allegedly selling psychotropic drugs and opioids illegally to customers in the United States and Europe. A Drug Enforcement Agency report from January 2015, obtained by BuzzFeed, indicates that Texas was in contact with an Indian drug supplier, Provizer Pharma, to obtain lethal injection drugs, just weeks before Indian narcotics…

Missouri plans to execute Mark Christeson (pictured) on January 31, without his case ever receiving substantive review in a federal court. Christeson’s appellate attorneys effectively abandoned him, failing to meet with him until a month after the filing deadline in his case had already passed. They filed his federal appeal four months late. As a result, the federal court rejected it as untimely. New attorneys offered to represent him, since the attorneys who missed the filing deadline could…

A new study reports that at least 201 Florida death row prisoners — including at least 134 whom judges sentenced to death after juries had returned non-unanimous sentencing recommendations — may be eligible for resentencing hearings as a result of recent rulings by the United States and Florida Supreme Courts declaring the state’s death sentencing practices unconstitutional. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Florida’s statute in Hurst v. Florida, ruling that it unconstitutionally denied…

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…