Publications & Testimony

During his 45 years in law enforcement, including 24 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, homicide investigator Tom Parker (pictured) changed his view on the death penalty. “There were times during my career when I would gladly have pushed the button on a murderer,” he said. “Today, my position would be, life without parole.” Parker says that seeing corrupt homicide investigations convinced him that innocent people could be executed. As result, he now opposes capital punishment and…

A federal court jury has awarded six Nebraska exonerees (pictured, at their exoneration) $28 million in damages for official misconduct that led to their wrongful convictions in the 1985 rape and murder of Helen Wilson. The “Beatrice Six,” as the group came to be known, were falsely accused of the killing and threatened with the death penalty. Five of the defendants — James Dean, Kathy Gonzalez, Debra Shelden, Ada JoAnn Taylor, and Tom Winslow — agreed to plea bargains or pled no contest to avoid…

In a chapter from the recently released American Bar Association publication, The State of Criminal Justice 2016, Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, describes significant trends and recent cases related to capital punishment. Tabak highlights the ongoing declines in death sentences and executions across the United States, as well as the increasing concentration of the death penalty in a small number of…

Just days after a split Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s execution protocol, Arkansas’ supply of vecuronium bromide — a paralytic agent used in the state’s three-drug lethal injection protocol — expired, leaving the status of future executions unclear. At that time, Governor Asa Hutchinson said that he wanted the Department of Correction to obtain a new supply of the drug rather than change the state’s method of execution. In 2015, the state spent $25,000 for lethal injection drugs and set…

Forty years after Gregg v. Georgia ushered in the modern era of capital punishment in the United States, the death penalty is in decline across the country and in Texas. The Lone Star State continues to lead the nation in executions — with nearly half of all executions in the U.S. this year — but the Amarillo Globe-News reports that fewer Texas prosecutors are seeking death sentences and fewer juries are imposing them. According to the Globe-News, 26 people have been sentenced to death since 1976…

A federal judge has rebuffed an attempt by Arizona to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the state’s death row prisoners challenging the state’s execution practices. The state argued at a hearing in the case in U.S. District Court on June 29, that the prisoners’ lawsuit should be declared moot because Arizona’s supply of midazolam — the first drug in one of the state’s four execution protocols — had expired and that the state has been unable to obtain a new supply of that drug and other potential execution…

Six months into 2016, the pace of executions in the United States remains at the same level as the 24-year low set in 2015. Fourteen executions have been carried out so far this year in five states — Texas (6), Georgia (5), and one each in Alabama, Florida, and Missouri — while 23 other scheduled executions have been halted by stays or reprieves. States carried out 28 executions in 2015. Eight executions are currently scheduled for the second half of the year, with seven in Texas and one in…

A new report by Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project has found that a small number of overzealous prosecutors with high rates of misconduct have a hugely disproportionate impact on the death penalty in the United States. The report, America’s Top Five Deadliest Prosecutors: How Overzealous Personalities Drive the Death Penalty, shows that, by themselves, these prosecutors are responsible for more than 440 death sentences, the equivalent of 15% of the entire U.S. death row population…

In his new book, Executing Grace, evangelical Christian speaker, activist, and author Shane Claiborne weaves together personal narratives, theology, and research to make a Christian case against the death penalty. Claiborne says “[t]he death penalty did not flourish in America in spite of Christians but because of us.” Arguing that “[w]e can’t make death penalty history until we make death penalty personal,” he tells the stories of people affected by the death penalty in a variety of ways…

In a court filing in the federal lawsuit challenging its execution procedures, Arizona officials have declared that the state does not have the drugs necessary to carry out an execution, and is currently unable to obtain them. The filing states, “the Department’s lack of the drugs and its current inability to obtain these drugs means that the Department is presently incapable of carrying out an execution.” Arizona has four separate multi-drug protocols it may use in executions. One involves…