Publications & Testimony

In the span of one week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review petitions from six death row prisoners, denying them relief in their cases. The petitioners raised issues related to DNA procedures, conflict of counsel, a disputed guilty plea, juror bias, judicial override, and a previously botched execution attempt. In two of the cases, the Court allowed executions to proceed in Georgia and Alabama. The case of Ronald Smith left the Court deadlocked 4 – 4, with enough votes to grant review in…

Miami-Dade County has historically been a significant contributor to Florida’s death row and large proportions of its recent death sentences raise serious constitutional questions about the practices that result in death verdicts and the characteristics of the defendants who are sentenced to death. Miami-Dade imposed five death sentences between 2010 and 2015, placing it among the 16 counties that produced more death sentences than 99.5% of all U.S. counties. The questionable reliability of…

After a divided U.S. Supreme Court twice temporarily halted the execution of Ronald Bert Smith, Jr. (pictured), Alabama put Smith to death on December 8 in a 34-minute execution in which Smith heaved, coughed, clenched his left fist, and opened one eye during one 13-minute period. Smith’s jury had recommended by a vote of 7 – 5 that he be sentenced to life without parole, but, in a practice permitted by no other state, his trial judge overrode that recommendation and sentenced Smith to death. At…

Since 1973, juries in Texas have had to determine whether a defendant presents a future danger to society before imposing a death sentence. But while they have found that each of the 244 men and women currently on the state’s death row poses ​“a continuing threat to society,” experts argue that juries cannot accurately predict a defendant’s future. According to Dr. Mark Cunningham, a psychologist and leading researcher on the issue of future dangerousness, “[j]uries show absolutely no…

At a December 6 – 7 national summit on severe mental illness and the death penalty, the American Bar Association Death Penalty Due Process Review Project released a new white paper that it hopes will provide law makers with information and policy analysis to ​“help states pass laws that will establish clear standards and processes to prevent the execution of those with severe mental illness.” The ABA does not take a position on the death penalty itself, but believes that “[i]ndividuals with severe…

Alabama is set to execute Ronald Smith on December 8, although the sentencing jury in his case recommended that he be sentenced to life. Under a practice that is no longer permitted in any other state, Smith’s judge overrode the jury’s sentencing recommendation and imposed a death sentence. As his execution approaches, Smith has filed a petition in the U.S. Supreme challenging the constitutionality of Alabama’s law. He argues it violates both his right to have a jury determination of all facts…

UPDATE: The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Sallie’s request for clemency. PREVIOUSLY: Georgia plans to execute William Sallie (pictured) on December 6 in a case his attorneys argue is tainted by egregious juror misconduct that no court has considered because Sallie missed a filing deadline during a period in which he was unrepresented and Georgia provided him no right to a lawyer. It is a case that Andrew Cohen, a Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and long-time legal…

With 55 executions since the 1970s, Dallas County, Texas, ranks second among all U.S. counties — behind only Harris County (Houston), Texas — in the number of prisoners it has put to death. It is also among the 2% of counties that account for more than half of all prisoners on death row across the country, and produced seven new death sentences and one resentence between 2010 and 2015, more than 99.5% of all U.S. counties during that period. Dallas County has a long history of prosecutorial…

Federal capital defendants are disproportionately sentenced to death in Missouri compared to other states, with 14.5% of the 62 prisoners currently on federal death row having been prosecuted in Missouri’s federal district courts. By contrast, a DPIC analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics shows that Missouri accounted for only 2.26% of murders in the United States between 1988, when the current federal death penalty statute was adopted, and 2012. Not surprisingly, an article in The…

During argument November 29 in the case of Moore v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court expressed skepticism about Texas’ idiosyncratic method of deciding whether a capital defendant has Intellectual Disability and is therefore ineligible for the death penalty. A trial court, applying the criteria for Intellectual Disability established by the medical community, found that Bobby James Moore (pictured) was not subject to the death penalty. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal reversed that…