Publications & Testimony

On January 23 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a chal­lenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures, par­tic­u­lar­ly its use of mida­zo­lam that was used in three botched exe­cu­tions in 2014. Four Oklahoma inmates asked the Court to review the state’s pro­ce­dures, but one of them, Charles Warner, was exe­cut­ed before the Court agreed to take the case. It is like­ly the oth­er three defen­dants will be grant­ed stays. When Warner was executed,…

UPDATE: (1/​27). Ladd was denied a stay by the TX Ct. of Crim. Appeals. Robert Ladd is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on January 29, despite hav­ing an IQ of 67, an indi­ca­tion of intel­lec­tial dis­abil­i­ty ren­der­ing him inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. Howver, Texas courts reject­ed Ladd’s pre­vi­ous appeal because the state has a unique way of eval­u­at­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Courts in Texas often con­sid­er what is called the ​“Briseño…

According to a recent arti­cle in the New Yorker, it has been dif­fcult select­ing a jury for the tri­al of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of the Boston Marathon bomb­ing. Many of the 1,350 peo­ple who filled out a juror ques­tion­naire have been elim­i­nat­ed from ser­vice based on their writ­ten answers. But even of those who remain, only a few have been found suf­fi­cient­ly impar­tial regard­ing Tsarnaev’s guilt or inno­cence and on poten­tial sen­tences, putting the selection…

On January 20 the U.S. Supreme Court (7 – 2) grant­ed Missouri death row inmate Mark Christeson new attor­neys to assist him in pur­su­ing his fed­er­al appeal. Christeson’s appoint­ed attor­neys missed a cru­cial fil­ing dead­line for his fed­er­al appeal, not even meet­ing with him until a month after the dead­line. New attor­neys offered to rep­re­sent Christeson, argu­ing that his cur­rent attor­neys had a con­flict of inter­est, since advo­cat­ing for him would…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reit­er­at­ed its oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, even as Missouri pre­pares to exe­cute the man con­vict­ed of killing a for­mer Post-Dispatch reporter. Marcellus Williams is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on January 28 for the mur­der of Lisha Gayle (pic­tured), who left her job as a jour­nal­ist three years before she was killed. The paper not­ed Gayle’s like­ly oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty: ​“It would be sur­pris­ing, in…

Georgia has set an exe­cu­tion date of January 27 for Warren Hill, an inmate diag­nosed with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties (for­mer­ly referred to as ​“men­tal retar­da­tion”). If Hill was con­vict­ed in any oth­er state in the coun­try, he almost cer­tain­ly would be inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. The U.S. Supreme Court banned the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), but allowed states to set pro­ce­dures for determining…

On January 14, the U.S. Supreme Court (6 – 3) hand­ed down a rul­ing in Jennings v. Stephens, a cap­i­tal case from Texas deal­ing with inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel. The Court held that when a defen­dant wins relief in a low­er fed­er­al court and the state appeals, the defen­dant may offer the­o­ries reject­ed by the low­er court as part of his defense of the relief grant­ed. He does not have to file a new appeal on that reject­ed the­o­ry. In his…

As Oklahoma pre­pared to car­ry out its first exe­cu­tion on January 15 since the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in April 2014, anes­the­si­ol­o­gist Dr. Mark Heath of Columbia University Medical School expressed seri­ous con­cerns about the drugs it will use, par­tic­u­lar­ly one that par­a­lyzes the inmate: ​“Oklahoma and oth­er states … should aban­don the bar­bar­ic use of par­a­lyz­ing drugs entire­ly.” He explained that when the pris­on­er is given…

Speaking from the bench at a hear­ing in a Kentucky cap­i­tal case, Fayette Circuit Judge Pamela Goodwine said, ​“Something needs to be done leg­isla­tive­ly in Kentucky and in every state in the U.S. I think the death penal­ty prob­a­bly should not be a penal­ty, ever.” Despite her per­son­al views, Goodwine ruled that the death penal­ty could be sought against a man accused of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a mur­der, even though he did not shoot the vic­tim. ​“As the law in Kentucky…