Publications & Testimony

On April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment in Glossip v. Gross, a case chal­leng­ing the use of mida­zo­lam in lethal injec­tions. Midazolam was used as the first drug in three botched exe­cu­tions in 2014, includ­ing the exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma exact­ly one year ago. Prisoners on Oklahoma’s death row argued that mida­zo­lam should not be used in exe­cu­tions because it could not reli­ably anes­the­size the prisoner…

In a case spot­light­ing issues of men­tal ill­ness and the death penal­ty, the Florida Supreme Court on April 23 unan­i­mous­ly over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill death-row inmate, Humberto Delgado (pic­tured). Delgado, who was con­vict­ed of killing a Tampa police offi­cer, will be resen­tenced to life with­out parole. The court said,​“We do not down­play the fact that Corporal Roberts lost his life as a result of…

Nebraska’s uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture recent­ly vot­ed 30 – 13 in favor of repeal­ing the State’s death penal­ty, advanc­ing the bill to a sec­ond round of leg­isla­tive review. (In Nebraska, a bill must pass three times before it is sent to the Governor.) A major­i­ty (17 out of 30) of Republican leg­is­la­tors vot­ed in favor of the bill, which was also sup­port­ed by 12 Democrats and one Independent leg­is­la­tor. Sen. Colby Coash (R‑Lincoln), said,​“If any oth­er sys­tem in our…

Four retired death-row prison offi­cials — two war­dens, a chap­lain, and an exe­cu­tion super­vi­sor — recent­ly described the effect that car­ry­ing out executions has…

In a recent op-ed in The Hill, three lead­ing phar­ma­cists wrote in sup­port of the res­o­lu­tion by the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), dis­cour­ag­ing phar­ma­cist par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions. Leonard Edloe, for­mer CEO of Edloe’s Professional Pharmacies, William Fassett (pic­tured), pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of phar­ma­col­o­gy at Washington State University, and Philip Hantsen,…

(Click image to enlarge) The Atlantic reports that death sen­tences are heav­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed in a small num­ber of heavy-use coun­ties. According to DePaul University law pro­fes­sor Robert J. Smith,​“1 per­cent of coun­ties accounts for rough­ly 44 per­cent of all death sen­tences” since the rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty in 1976. Death-sen­­tenc­ing rates in those coun­ties are not a prod­uct of their pop­u­la­tion or mur­der rates, Smith points out. For exam­ple, from…

(Click here to enlarge image). According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, Pennsylvania is less like­ly to exe­cute a death row inmate than any oth­er state that has car­ried out any exe­cu­tions. A Reading Eagle analy­sis of BJS data from 1973 through 2013 shows that the Commonwealth has exe­cut­ed few­er than 1% of all death-sen­­tenced defen­dants since 1973, with exe­cu­tion the least like­ly of 5 pos­si­ble out­comes for people…

(Click on image to enlarge). The Federal Bureau of Investigation has for­mal­ly acknowl­edged that exam­in­ers from the FBI Laboratory’s micro­scop­ic hair com­par­i­son unit for decades pro­vid­ed flawed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny pur­port­ed­ly match­ing crime scene hair evi­dence to the hair of defen­dants charged with those crimes. As part of an ongo­ing review of inac­cu­rate foren­sic evi­dence, the FBI admit­ted that, in the 268 tri­als exam­ined so far, its forensic…

(Click image to enlarge) Polls released this week by Pew Research Center and CBS News show that pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty has declined to near his­toric lows. Both polls report­ed that 56% of Americans sup­port the death penal­ty. That is the low­est lev­el of sup­port ever record­ed by the CBS News poll, and near the low­est lev­el report­ed by Pew in the last 40 years. The Pew poll exam­ined lev­els of sup­port by polit­i­cal par­ty and found that the decline in…

On April 10, the Tennessee Supreme Court can­celed the exe­cu­tion dates for all four Tennessee death-row inmates cur­rent­ly under death war­rant, and returned their cas­es to the low­er courts to address the inmates’ chal­lenges to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. The exe­cu­tions had been sched­uled for October 2015 through March 2016. Tennessee has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2009, but the state announced in 2013 that it would switch from a three-drug…