Publications & Testimony

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…

Christopher Wilkins (pictured) is scheduled to be executed in Texas on January 11, even as he has a petition pending before the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that he has been improperly denied the opportunity to develop and present evidence that he suffers from significant cognitive deficits. Wilkins’ Supreme Court petition asserts that his trial lawyer, Wesley Ball, who later withdrew from the case because of a potential conflict of interest, barely conducted any investigation into the case…

Newly-elected Denver, Colorado District Attorney Beth McCann (pictured), sworn into office on January 10, 2017, has said that her administration will not seek the death penalty. Asked by 9News, Denver’s NBC affiliate, whether Denver was “done with the death penalty,” McCann said: “We are under my administration. I don’t think that the state should be in the business of killing people.” McCann told 9News that alternative sentences provide sufficient punishment at a substantially lesser cost: “I…

Saying that “race plays a decisive role in who lives and who dies” in capital cases in the United States, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL) voted at its 40^th annual conference on December 14, 2016, to adopt its first ever resolution calling for the abolition of the death penalty. The resolution states that “racial bias in the criminal justice system, including the death penalty and its application, is an undisputed fact,” and notes that “from slavery to Jim Crow to the…

Despite a sharp drop in executions, the United States ranked sixth among the world’s executioners in 2016 behind only China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Pakistan, according to a report by the British-based international human rights group, Reprieve. Maya Foa, a director of Reprieve, said “[i]t is alarming that countries with close links to the UK and [European Union] continue to occupy the ranks of the world’s most prolific executioners in 2016.” Questions of innocence, execution of juvenile…

In a new setback to efforts to restart executions in California, the state’s Office of Administrative Law (OAL) has rejected the new lethal injection protocol proposed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. On December 28, 2016, the OAL, which is responsible for reviewing regulatory changes proposed in California, issued a 25-page decision of disapproval, citing inconsistencies, inadequate justification for certain parts of the proposal, and a failure to adequately…

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice filed suit on January 3, 2017 against the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the FDA’s continued detention of drugs Texas had attempted to import for executions. In October 2015, Texas and Arizona attempted to import sodium thiopental, an anesthetic commonly used in executions prior to 2010, from Harris Pharma, a supplier in India. The FDA halted both shipments, saying that their import violated federal law. The FDA does not comment on…