Publications & Testimony

On October 8, 2014 for­mer death row inmate Manuel Velez (pic­tured with his son before his arrest) was freed from a Texas prison, fol­low­ing a ​“no con­test” plea to a less­er charge on August 25. Velez had been con­vict­ed of killing his girl­friend’s one-year-old son but con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his com­plete inno­cence. Velez’s con­vic­tion was over­turned in 2013 because his attor­ney failed to present evi­dence that the injuries lead­ing to the child’s…

County Judge Michael P. Donnelly, a mem­ber of Ohio’s Death Penalty Task Force appoint­ed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, recent­ly called the costs of cap­i­tal tri­als ​“astro­nom­i­cal.” He went on to say that a coun­ty’s bud­get may be a fac­tor in deci­sions to seek the death penal­ty: “[W]ith 88 dif­fer­ent pros­e­cu­tors who have com­plete dis­cre­tion on whether to pur­sue it or not, and you have to draw the infer­ence that, in some coun­ties, it’s not pursued…

On September 24, Pennsylvania reached a new mile­stone with the 250^th death-sen­tence rever­sal since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1978. The state has imposed approx­i­mate­ly 412 death sen­tences since rein­state­ment. Only three pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed, and all three waived at least part of their appeals. There have been no exe­cu­tions in Pennsylvania for 15 years. Over 60% of all death sen­tences imposed in the state have been over­turned by state or fed­er­al courts; 190…

The U.S. Supreme Court will begin its 2014 – 15 term on October 6. One of the cas­es the Court will hear dur­ing its first month is Jennings v. Stephens, a Texas death penal­ty case involv­ing inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel and whether a sep­a­rate appeal is nec­es­sary for each such claim. Oral argu­ments will take place on October 15. The Court has been asked to review an appeal from Scott Panetti, anoth­er death row inmate from…

An arti­cle in the most recent issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review exam­ines the prac­tice of exclud­ing African-Americans from jury ser­vice, par­tic­u­lar­ly in death penal­ty cas­es in North Carolina. In Bias in the Box, Dax-Devlon Ross notes, ​“Alongside the right to vote, the right to serve on a jury is an endur­ing pil­lar of our democracy.…Nevertheless, there is per­haps no are­na of pub­lic life where racial bias has been as broad­ly over­looked or casually…

A coun­ty judge in Georgia denied relief for Warren Hill, a death row inmate whose diag­nosed intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties have failed to meet the state’s nar­row stan­dard for exemp­tion from the death penal­ty. However, the judge encour­aged the state Supreme Court to con­sid­er whether a recent U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing, Hall v. Florida, should require Georgia to mod­i­fy its stan­dard. Chief Judge Thomas Wilson of Butts County said, ​“In light…

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, has writ­ten a new book, Just Mercy, about his expe­ri­ences defend­ing the poor and the wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed through­out the south. It includes the sto­ry of one of Stevenson’s first cas­es as a young lawyer, that of Walter McMillian, who was even­tu­al­ly exon­er­at­ed and freed from death row. McMillian, a black man, had been con­vict­ed of the mur­der of a white woman in…

is a death row inmate in Texas, who has been diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia and schizoaf­fec­tive dis­or­der and believes he is at the cen­ter of a strug­gle between God and Satan. The state has con­tin­ued to insist he is com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. Panetti rep­re­sent­ed him­self at his tri­al, appear­ing in court wear­ing a cow­boy out­fit and mak­ing bizarre, ram­bling state­ments. He attempt­ed to sub­poe­na Jesus Christ, the pope, and 200 oth­ers. He was con­vict­ed and sentenced…

An arti­cle in the lat­est edi­tion of The Angolite, a mag­a­zine pub­lished by pris­on­ers at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, tells the sto­ries of the ten men who have been exon­er­at­ed from death row in that state. The piece promi­nent­ly fea­tures Glenn Ford, the state’s most recent inmate to be freed. Ford spent 30 years on death row before being released in 2014. Among the oth­er cas­es described is that of John…

Phillip Cheatham was rep­re­sent­ed at his death penal­ty tri­al by a lawyer who failed to devel­op a read­i­ly avail­able ali­bi defense and por­trayed Cheatham as a pos­si­ble killer. The lawyer, Ira Dennis Hawver (pic­tured at his dis­bar­ment hear­ing, left), pre­sent­ed Cheatham as a drug-deal­ing killer who would not have left a wit­ness alive to iden­ti­fy him and would have tak­en few­er shots to kill the vic­tims. Hawyer admit­ted he might not have jumped…