Publications & Testimony

The geographic arbitrariness, high rates of official misconduct, racial discrimination, and poor defense representation characteristic of outlier jurisdictions that disproportionately seek and impose the death penalty in the United States are all present in Clark County, Nevada’s administration of the death penalty. From 2010 through 2015, nine death sentences were imposed in Clark County, while no one was sentenced to death in any other county in Nevada during that same period. In an analysis…

Calling racial bias in the administration of the death penalty “an undisputed fact,” the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators (NHCSL), a group of 320 Hispanic legislators, has passed a resolution urging legislative action in all state and federal jurisdictions to repeal the death penalty across the United States. The legislators note that the criminal justice system subjects “Black, Latino, Native Americans, and all people of color” to more punitive treatment, including being “more…

Attorneys for Mississippi death row prisoner Eddie Lee Howard (pictured) are seeking to prove his innocence and challenging the questionable expert bite mark testimony that persuaded jurors to convict him and sentence him to death in 1992. As part of the attack on that evidence, Howard’s lawyers recently deposed Michael West, the discredited forensic odontologist who testified against Howard and many other defendants in the 1990s, primarily in Mississippi and Louisiana. A two-part story by…

Maricopa County, Arizona imposed 28 death sentences between 2010 and 2015 and, as described in a BuzzFeed news analysis of a new report on outlier death penalty practices, “stands out for its stark examples of the problems found across the counties that most often sentence people to death.” The report, Too Broken to Fix, by Harvard University’s Fair Punishment Project, studied the nation’s 16 most prolific death-sentencing counties and found that Maricopa County exhibited systemic problems…

In a new book, Against the Death Penalty, Professor John Bessler of the University of Baltimore School of Law presents Justice Stephen Breyer’s historic dissent in Glossip v. Gross, which questioned the continuing constitutionality of capital punishment in the United States, in a new format intended to make the opinion more accessible to a broad audience. “I tried to contextualize the opinion by doing a longer introduction which makes the opinion into a book and summarize what the other…

In a primary election described as reshaping the political landscape of Northeast Florida, the region voted in a landslide Tuesday to oust State Attorney Angela Corey (pictured) and Public Defender Matt Shirk. The pair’s controversial policies had made Duval County one of the most prolific death sentencing counties in the country and had led to national derision of its criminal justice system. Some legal experts touted Corey’s defeat by political newcomer Melissa Nelson as evidence of voter…

FBI records show that state claims that execution drug suppliers have been the subject of threats by anti-death penalty activists are largely unsubstantiated and exaggerated, according to an investigation by BuzzFeed News. BuzzFeed found that “few concrete examples” of the alleged harassment, intimidation, and physical threats states claim have been made against drug suppliers, and that “the states’ marquee example — in which the FBI allegedly investigated a serious bomb threat sent to a drug…

In a 5 – 2 order, with two judges dissenting and two others not participating, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the scheduled August 31 execution of Rolando Ruiz (pictured). The order did not specify the reason why the court issued the stay, saying only that after reviewing a new challenge to Ruiz’s death sentence that his lawyers had filed, “we have determined that his execution should be stayed pending further order by this Court.” Although Texas remains the most prolific state in…

Between 2010 and 2015, only 16 counties in the United States imposed five or more death sentences. Duval County, Florida, which consistently ranks among the most punitive death sentencing counties in the country, sentenced 25 capital defendants to death. According to a new report released by the Fair Punishment Project at Harvard University, Duval produced roughly one-quarter of the death sentences imposed in Florida during that period, although the entire Jacksonville Standard Metropolitan…

A group of 16 former state and federal judges and three of the nation’s preeminent criminal defense organizations have filed briefs in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in support of Missouri death row inmate Mark Christeson’s efforts to be afforded a meaningful opportunity to investigate and present his claims to the federal courts. Christeson was nearly executed in 2014 without ever having any federal court hear his case, after the lawyers appointed to represent him in his…