Publications & Testimony

David Keaton, the first man exon­er­at­ed from death row in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty (1973-present), died on July 3 at the age of 63. Keaton was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Florida in 1971 for the mur­der of an off-duty police offi­cer. His con­vic­tion was based on a coerced con­fes­sion and erro­neous eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. In 1973, the actu­al per­pe­tra­tor was dis­cov­ered because of new evi­dence, and Keaton was exon­er­at­ed. In 2003, Keaton became a…

Highlighting the recent abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in Nebraska and con­cerns about wrong­ful con­vic­tions, National Urban League President Marc H. Morial (pic­tured) called for an end to exe­cu­tions. In an op-ed for The Philadelphia Tribune, Morial cit­ed declin­ing pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty: ​“56 per­cent of Americans sup­port the death penal­ty, this from a high of almost 80 per­cent in the mid-90s,” he said. He also empha­sized the growing…

A fed­er­al judge in Louisiana has delayed five exe­cu­tions until at least July 2016 as state offi­cials strug­gle to deter­mine how to con­duct exe­cu­tions using lethal injec­tion. Christopher Sepulvado, a death row inmate whose exe­cu­tion has been resched­uled sev­er­al times over the last two years, is chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Louisiana’s exe­cu­tion method. The Department of Corrections request­ed that a hear­ing relat­ed to…

Through the lens of a 1927 mur­der and the ensu­ing tri­als of three sus­pects, An Evil Day in Georgia exam­ines the death penal­ty sys­tem in Prohibition-era Georgia. James Hugh Moss, a black man, and Clifford Thompson, a white man, both from Tennessee, were accused of the mur­der of store own­er Coleman Osborn in rur­al north Georgia. Thought to be involved in the ille­gal inter­state trade of alco­hol, they were tried, con­vict­ed, and sen­tenced to death on circumstantial…

In a dis­sent­ing opin­ion in Glossip v. Gross, Justice Stephen Breyer (pic­tured), joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pro­vid­ed a sweep­ing analy­sis of why he believes the death penal­ty in the United States may be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and called for a ​“full brief­ing” on ​“whether the death penal­ty vio­lates the Constitution.” Justice Breyer wrote that ​“Nearly 40 years ago, this Court upheld the death penal­ty under statutes that, in the…

Death row in Texas has shrunk from 460 men and women at its peak in 1999 to 260 today. The main rea­son for that drop, accord­ing to an arti­cle in The Texas Tribune, is the dra­mat­ic decline in death sen­tences imposed in the state. In 1999 alone, Texas sen­tenced 48 peo­ple to death. But in the first 6 months of 2015, no death sen­tences have been imposed in Texas. This devel­op­ment is unprece­dent­ed, accord­ing to the Texas Defender Service (TDS). ​“This is…

Michelle Byrom (pic­tured, seat­ed) was released from prison in Mississippi on June 26 after spend­ing 16 years behind bars, 14 of them on death row, for the mur­der of her hus­band. Byrom main­tains her inno­cence for the crime, but agreed to an Alford plea — which means that she plead­ed no con­test to the charges against her — in exchange for her release. In 2014, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed Byrom’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence and ordered a new tri­al, cit­ing numerous…

Glenn Ford, who was exon­er­at­ed last year after spend­ing almost 30 years on Louisiana’s death row, died of lung can­cer on June 29 at the age of 65. At the time of his release, Ford was the nation’s longest-serv­ing death row exoneree. Just hours after his death, Ford’s case was cit­ed in the dis­sent­ing opin­ion of Justice Breyer in Glossip v. Gross, as pro­vid­ing ​“strik­ing” evi­dence ​“that the death penal­ty has been…

On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court held (5 – 4) in Glossip v. Gross that Oklahoma inmates ​“failed to estab­lish a like­li­hood of suc­cess on the mer­its of their claim that the use of mida­zo­lam vio­lates the Eighth Amendment.” Three inmates on Oklahoma’s death row had chal­lenged the state’s use of mida­zo­lam as the first drug in a three-drug pro­to­col, say­ing that it ​“fails to ren­der a per­son insen­sate to…