Publications & Testimony

The execution of John Conner on July 15 ended a two-month period without executions in the United States, the longest such period in the country since 2007 – 2008. A range of state-specific issues have contributed to this stoppage, including questions about the constitutionality of state death penalty practices, problems relating to lethal injection drugs and state execution protocols, and the fallout from botched executions. In an article for The American Prospect, Professor Frank Baumgartner…

A court hearing is under way in the capital trial of Donald Fell in a Vermont federal district court challenging the constitutionality of the federal death penalty. This week, death penalty experts testified for the defense about systemic problems Fell’s lawyers say may render the federal death penalty unconstitutional. Fell was sentenced to death in 2006, but was granted a new trial because of juror misconduct. The hearing began on July 11 and is scheduled to continue until July 22. Judge…

Georgia is continuing with preparations to execute John Conner (pictured) on July 14 after the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles denied his clemency petition and the Georgia Supreme Court denied him a stay of execution. In the clemency proceedings, Conner’s attorneys presented evidence that he is intellectually disabled and that he was raised in poverty and extreme violence in a home filled with chronic drug and alcohol abuse and in which sexual and emotional abuse were the norm. Conner’s…

In a landmark ruling in McCleskey v. Kemp in 1987, a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court voted 5 – 4 vote that statistical evidence of racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty was insufficient to overturn an individual death sentence. A new book, Race and the Death Penalty: The Legacy of McCleskey v. Kemp, edited by David P. Keys, associate professor of criminal justice at New Mexico State University and R.J. Maratea of the Youth Research and Resource Center, Inc. explores…

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…