Publications & Testimony

The board of Cleveland​.com and The Plain Dealer pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al sup­port­ing the pas­sage of Senate Bill 101 that would abol­ish the death penal­ty in Ohio. “[T]he time is right,” states the piece, ​“for the General Assembly to come togeth­er to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Ohio. Its inequities are man­i­fest, its bar­barism is clear — and its time has passed.”

A forth­com­ing arti­cle in the Denver Law Review dis­cuss­es two the­o­ries of homi­cide law, the felony mur­der rule and accom­plice lia­bil­i­ty, that cre­ate group lia­bil­i­ty for the actions of an indi­vid­ual. The arti­cle, writ­ten by Professors G. Ben Cohen (pic­tured), Justin D. Levinson, and Koichi Hioki states that ​“Research sug­gests that the admin­is­tra­tion of accom­plice lia­bil­i­ty [and] felony mur­der doc­trines dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact Black and minor­i­ty defen­dants,” caus­ing minor­i­ty defen­dants to be sen­tenced for first degree mur­ders they did not per­son­al­ly com­mit at greater rates than white defen­dants. The researchers’ expla­na­tion for this dis­par­i­ty is that ​“Americans auto­mat­i­cal­ly indi­vid­u­al­ize white…

On April 21, 2023, Governor Jay Inslee signed leg­is­la­tion remov­ing the death penal­ty from the state’s laws. With that action, all three branch­es of the state’s gov­ern­ment have tak­en steps to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Washington: Gov. Inslee had declared a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2014, the state Supreme Court found the statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 2018, and the leg­is­la­ture has now strick­en it from the crim­i­nal code.

On April 20, 2023, Texas leg­is­la­tors ini­tial­ly approved House Bill (HB) 1736 to lim­it the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in cas­es where a defen­dant com­mits a felony that was accom­pa­nied by a mur­der car­ried out by some­one oth­er than the defen­dant. Many states have a ​“felony mur­der” rule, sim­i­lar to Texas’ ​“Law of Parties,” which pro­vides that if one per­son is found guilty of mur­der, the offend­er’s accom­plices or co-con­spir­a­tors may also be found guilty of mur­der, regard­less of their intent to kill.

On April 19, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (6 – 3) in Reed v. Goertz that a Texas death row pris­on­er could con­tin­ue his pur­suit of DNA test­ing that a low­er court had blocked. The Court held that Rodney Reed’s (pic­tured) civ­il rights claim was filed in fed­er­al court in a time­ly way.

On April 17, 2023, lawyers for Toforest Johnson (pic­tured, cen­ter), who has spent 25 years on Alabama’s death row, filed a peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari to the U.S. Supreme Court request­ing a new tri­al. The peti­tion was but­tressed by sup­port from the present District Attorney and from the orig­i­nal tri­al pros­e­cu­tor in Johnson’s case.

Florida is poised to become the state with the nation’s low­est thresh­old for juries to rec­om­mend death sen­tences, after the state leg­is­la­ture passed a bill allow­ing a judge to impose death if at least eight out of twelve jurors agree. Most states, includ­ing Florida, have required a unan­i­mous jury ver­dict to rec­om­mend death. Governor Ron DeSantis (pic­tured) is expect­ed to sign the bill, fol­low­ing the House’s approval on April 13, 2023. Alabama requires at least 10 jurors to approve a death sen­tence. It is like­ly that the Florida leg­is­la­tion will…

On March 31, 2023, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost released the state’s annu­al Capital Crimes report for 2022. According to the report, the aver­age time pris­on­ers spend on the state’s death row before an exe­cu­tion date is set is near­ly 21 years – a num­ber that has con­sis­tent­ly increased with each annu­al report. Even when an exe­cu­tion date is set, a pris­on­er ​“is more like­ly to die of sui­cide or nat­ur­al caus­es than as a result of exe­cu­tion,” due to the ongo­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in obtain­ing lethal injec­tion drugs. The report…

The fol­low­ing law review arti­cles by sev­er­al key death penal­ty researchers were recent­ly pub­lished in 107 Cornell Law Review, No. 6, September, 2022. They cov­er a vari­ety of issues, such as the inter­play between race and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the his­to­ry of the death penal­ty, the fed­er­al death penal­ty, sen­tenc­ing trends, and the fed­er­al court’s role in cap­i­tal punishment:

In He Called Me Sister: A True Story of Finding Humanity on Death Row, author Suzanne Craig Robertson details her jour­ney from reluc­tance to true friend­ship dur­ing her chal­leng­ing fif­teen-year rela­tion­ship with Cecil Johnson, a Tennessee death-row pris­on­er, who was exe­cut­ed in December 2009. Using let­ters, poems, and a per­son­al mem­oir writ­ten by Johnson, Robertson tells their mutu­al sto­ry of per­se­ver­ance, recall­ing that ​“dif­fer­ences don’t have to be barriers.”