Publications & Testimony

On April 13, the Tennessee House of Representatives joined the Tennessee Senate in unanimously approving a bill that would mandate the preservation of biological evidence in cases involving a death sentence. The House voted 94 – 0 in favor of the bill after the Senate had passed the bill on April 4 by a 31 – 0 vote. If the governor signs the bill, such evidence must be held until the defendant is executed, dies, or is released from prison. Destruction of evidence will be handled as criminal…

California death row prisoner Kevin Cooper (pictured), whose innocence claims recently spurred the American Bar Association to call for a reprieve, recently authored an article describing what is was like for him to experience nearly being executed on February 10, 2004. Cooper described the days leading up to his scheduled execution, which included round-the-clock monitoring, medical exams, and meetings with his attorneys. “My lawyers kept coming to see me and updating me on what the were doing…

UPDATE: The Supreme Court docket indicates that its conferencing of Mr. Buck’s case, originally set for April 22, has been rescheduled. The Court is now scheduled to considering the case on April 29. PREVIOUSLY: On April 22, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to confer on whether to review the case of Duane Buck (pictured), who was sentenced to death in Harris County, Texas after a psychologist testified that he posed an increased risk of future dangerousness because he is black. In the case…

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections knew it had used an unauthorized drug in the execution of Charles Warner nearly six months before it almost repeated the mistake in the aborted execution of Richard Glossip. Oklahoma executed Warner on January 15, 2015. Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveal that three months later, in April, the state medical examiner submitted a report to the Department on Warner’s autopsy, showing that he had been executed using potassium acetate, in violation of…

Texas State Comptroller Glenn Hegar has rejected an application for compensation filed by death-row exoneree Alfred DeWayne Brown, asserting that the court proceedings leading to his release did not constitute a determination that he was “actually innocent.” Brown had applied for approximately $1.9 million in cash and annuity payments under Texas’ exoneration compensation law. Harris County prosecutors dismissed charges against Brown in June 2015, after he had spent a decade on death row for…

Georgia is preparing to execute Kenneth Fults (pictured) on April 12, following the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denial of his clemency application. Fults’ current lawyers presented evidence to the Board that Fults is intellectually disabled and “functions in the lowest 1 percent of the population.” They also argued that Fults’ trial lawyer failed to present this evidence to the jury, as well as extensive evidence that Fults endured a childhood of chronic abuse and torment in which he…

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe rejected a bill that would have employed the electric chair as the state’s method of execution if lethal injection drugs are unavailable. Instead, he offered amendments that would permit the Commonwealth’s Department of Corrections to enter into confidential contracts to obtain execution drugs from compounding pharmacies, whose identities would be concealed from the public. His proposal is similar to legislation he backed last year that failed because of…

Kenneth Clair (pictured), whose California death sentence was overturned last year, says he is innocent and that the Orange County District Attorney’s office is withholding DNA evidence that would prove it. His prosecutors have declared that they will not seek the death penalty against Clair in a new sentencing hearing, and in so doing may avoid pretrial discovery proceedings in which they could have been required to turn over the potentially exclupatory DNA evidence to the defense. Clair was…

A Texas court has found that a severely mentally ill death-row inmate, Marcus Druery (pictured), is incompetent to be executed. Druery’s attorneys presented more than 150 pages of reports from mental health professionals arguing that, as a result of major mental illness, Druery does not understand why he is being punished, making it unconstitutional to execute him. His “paranoid and grandiose delusions…deprive him of a rational understanding of the connection between his crime and punishment,”…

Amnesty International reported that worldwide executions spiked by 54% to at least 1,634 — a 25-year high — in 2015, even as the number of countries abolishing the death penalty reached record levels. In its annual report on global developments in capital punishment, released on April 6, Amnesty said that the bulk of recorded executions were concentrated in just three outlier countries — Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. These countries accounted for 89% of all recorded executions. Amnesty did not…