Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

On June 29, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Oklahoma pris­on­ers’ lethal injec­tion chal­lenge in Glossip v. Gross. In a sweep­ing dis­sent­ing opin­ion, Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, raised seri­ous ques­tions about the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. Below are excerpts from the opin­ion with links to the DPIC resources cited…

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…

Lester Bower was exe­cut­ed in Texas on June 3 despite main­tain­ing his inno­cence through­out the 30 years he spent on death row. The evi­dence of Bower’s inno­cence includ­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from a woman who said that her boyfriend and three of his friends — not Bower — had com­mit­ted the mur­ders for which Bower was exe­cut­ed. The wit­ness came for­ward in 1989, after read­ing that Bower had been sen­tenced to death for the crime her boyfriend had…

In an inter­view with The Marshall Project, Bryan Stevenson (pic­tured), direc­tor of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy, dis­cussed the role the his­to­ry of slav­ery, lynch­ings, and racial ter­ror­ism in the South played in the racial­­ly-moti­­vat­ed killings of nine black peo­ple in an his­toric black church in Charleston,…

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a Georgia case, Foster v. Humphrey, in which an all-white jury sen­tenced a black man to death after pros­e­cu­tors struck every black prospec­tive juror in the case. The Court will deter­mine whether pros­e­cu­tors vio­lat­ed the Court’s 1986 deci­sion in Batson v. Kentucky, which banned the prac­tice of dis­miss­ing poten­tial jurors on the basis of race. In antic­i­pa­tion of the case, The New Yorker…