Publications & Testimony

With newly discovered confessions and DNA evidence pointing to the prosecution’s chief witness as the actual killer, the Florida Supreme Court, on October 27, vacated the capital conviction of death-row prisoner Clemente Aguirre. Aguirre was convicted of killing his two neighbors — an elderly woman and her adult daughter — but he has always maintained his innocence and claimed that he discovered the women after they were deceased. After he was convicted, Aguirre’s post-conviction attorneys…

Kenya has commuted the death sentences of all 2,747 prisoners on the nation’s death row. On October 24, President Uhuru Kenyatta signed orders sparing the lives of 2,655 men and 92 women who had been sentenced to death, commuting their sentences to terms of life in prison. While Kenya still authorizes the death penalty, it has not carried out an execution in nearly 30 years. In August 2009, former President Mwai Kibaki commuted the death sentences of the more than 4,000 prisoners who were then…

Support for the death penalty in the United States is at its lowest level since November 1972, according to a Gallup poll released October 25. Gallup reported that 60% of respondents said they support capital punishment — off one percentage point from last year — while opposition remained at 37%, matching its highest level since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972. Support has dropped 9 points since 2007 and 20 points since its peak in 1994. The results reflect the same…

Sherman Brown (pictured), a man who was sentenced to death in Virginia in 1970 for the murder of a 4‑year-old boy, has filed a writ of actual innocence with the Virginia Supreme Court saying that DNA testing on recently discovered evidence clears him of the crime. Brown’s petition states: ​“Recent DNA testing demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence what I have maintained for over 45 years: that I am innocent of this crime. The evidence against me at trial was deeply flawed.” Brown was…

The death penalty adversely affects both families of murder victims and families of the accused, according to two recent journal articles. In his Psychology Today blog, Talking About Trauma, psychologist Dr. Robert T. Muller (pictured) reports that psychological studies have have found that the death penalty produces negative effects on families and friends of murder victims (referred to as ​“co-victims”). One University of Minnesota study found that just 2.5% of co-victims reported achieving…

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that death-row prisoners who had unsuccessfully argued that they are ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability must be provided a second chance to prove their claims. On October 20, the Court decided in Walls v. State that Florida must retroactively apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Hall v. Florida, which declared Florida’s procedures for determining intellectual disability to be unconstitutional. Prisoners whose…

Harris County, Texas, the county that leads the nation in executions, has served as a bellwether in recent years of the nationwide decline of the death penalty. Although the 10 new death sentences imposed in Harris County since 2010 are more than were imposed in 99.5% of U.S. counties, they are significantly fewer than the 53 new death sentences that were handed down in Harris in 1998 – 2003 and the 16 from 2004 – 2009. The 2016 Kinder Institute survey of Houston residents showed that just 27%…

Edwin Meese III (pictured), who served as U.S. Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, and Robert Morgenthau, the long-time district attorney of Manhattan who served as a U.S. attorney under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, believe that Alabama death row prisoner William Kuenzel is innocent and are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case. Meese and Morgenthau belong to different political parties and take opposing views on capital punishment, but both believe that…

Saying the death penalty is ​“too fallible to endure,” the Lincoln Journal Star has called on Nebraska voters to end capital punishment in the state. In two editorials published in connection with the upcoming statewide death penalty ballot referendum on November 8, the paper urged Nebraskans to retain the legislature’s death penalty repeal bill. The predominantly Republican legislature voted to repeal the state’s death penalty in May 2015 and then, a few days later, overrode a veto by Governor…

After having ​“solicited thoroughly for vendors,” the Nevada Department of Corrections announced that no pharmaceutical company has offered to sell the state drugs for use in executions. James Dzurenda, director of the Nevada Department of Corrections issued a statement on October 7 saying that the Department had sent 247 requests for proposals to pharmaceutical suppliers on September 2 and, in response, had received no bids to supply the state with lethal injection drugs. In August, Dzurenda…