Publications & Testimony

In a let­ter to the President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, Pope Francis expressed the Catholic Church’s oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, call­ing it ​“inad­mis­si­ble, no mat­ter how seri­ous the crime com­mit­ted.” He con­tin­ued, ​“It is an offence against the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty of life and the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son, which con­tra­dicts God’s plan for man and soci­ety, and his mer­ci­ful jus­tice, and impedes the penal­ty from ful­fill­ing any just objec­tive. It…

Mamie Norwood, whose hus­band, Amos, was killed by Pennsylvania death row pris­on­er Terry Williams (pic­tured), recent­ly wrote a let­ter to two state offi­cials ask­ing them to ​“stop try­ing to exe­cute Terry…

UPDATE: On March 23, 2015, Judge Rosa Mroz offi­cial­ly dis­missed the charges against Milke. Milke has been added to DPIC’s exon­er­a­tion list. See Milke’s state­ment on her exon­er­a­tion. PREVIOUSLY: On March 17, the Arizona Supreme Court denied a request by pros­e­cu­tors that it review a low­er court’s order that dis­missed the charges against Debra Milke as a result of ​“egre­gious” police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and bar­ring her…

A new study from researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds that the most like­ly out­come for a cap­i­tal case once a death sen­tence has been imposed is that the defen­dan­t’s con­vic­tion or sen­tence will be reversed on appeal. Execution is only the third most likely…

Legislators in Ohio are seek­ing to enact death penal­ty reforms as the state grap­ples with prob­lems in the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Sen. Bill Seitz, a Republican, and Sen. Sandra Williams, a Democrat, are work­ing on four bills to address some of the reforms rec­om­mend­ed by the Ohio Supreme Court Death Penalty Task Force last year. The bills would pre­vent the exe­cu­tion of defen­dants with seri­ous men­tal impair­ments, estab­lish a fund for indigent…

A pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed let­ter writ­ten by jail­house infor­mant Johnny E. Webb, a cru­cial wit­ness in the tri­al of Cameron Willingham (pic­tured) in Texas, indi­cates that Webb’s sen­tence may have been reduced in exchange for his tes­ti­mo­ny that Willingham had con­fessed to inten­tion­al­ly start­ing a house fire that killed his three daugh­ters. The defense had nev­er been informed of the exis­tence of any deal between Webb and pros­e­cu­tors in the case. Willingham was…

On March 4, Akorn Pharmaceuticals, a man­u­fac­tur­er of two drugs (mida­zo­lam and pen­to­bar­bi­tal) that have been used in exe­cu­tions, released a state­ment announc­ing mea­sures to block the sale of its prod­ucts to pris­ons. Akorn joins at least two oth­er U.S.-based drug com­pa­nies and sev­er­al European com­pa­nies in express­ing oppo­si­tion to the use of their prod­ucts in lethal injec­tions. In 2014, Par Pharmaceuticals respond­ed to Indiana’s pro­posed use of one of their…

On March 9, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Hurst v. Florida, a chal­lenge to the state’s unusu­al sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure. In a pri­or rul­ing, Ring v. Arizona (2002), the Court held that the ques­tion of whether a defen­dant is eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty is enti­tled to a jury deterem­i­na­tion. Unlike almost every oth­er state where unan­i­mous juries are required for death eli­gi­bil­i­ty and a death sen­tence, Florida only…

UPDATE: An image of Cecil Clayton’s brain obtained via MRI can be viewed here. The image shows the front left part of his brain is phys­i­cal­ly missing.