Publications & Testimony

Three death-row exonerees, including two who became symbols of the risks of wrongful capital convictions, died in 2015. David Keaton (pictured, far left), the first man exonerated from death row in the modern era of the death penalty, died on July 3 at the age of 63. A teenaged Keaton was sentenced to death in Florida in 1971 for the murder of an off-duty police officer. His conviction was based upon a coerced confession and erroneous eyewitness testimony. Keaton was exonerated in 1973 when new…

Velma Barfield in North Carolina on November 2, 1984 — She was in a relationship with Stuart Taylor who was a widower. She forged checks on Taylor’s account to pay for her addiction. Fearing that she had been found out, she mixed an arsenic based rat poison into his beer and tea. Taylor became very ill. As his condition worsened, she took him to the hospital where he died a few days later. There was an autopsy which found that the cause of Taylor’s death was arsenic poisoning and Velma was…

Donnis Musgrove Alabama: Conviction, 1988; Died on Death Row, 2015 David Rogers Alabama: Conviction, 1988; Died on Death Row, 2004 Donnis Musgrove (pictured) died of lung cancer on Alabama’s death row on November 25, while his case — which included a substantial claim of innocence — was pending before a federal judge. Musgrove’s attorneys had asked U.S. District Judge David Proctor to rule quickly because of Musgrove’s medical condition. Musgrove and his co-defendant, David Rogers, who previously…

In 1997, a St. Louis County, Missouri jury unanimously voted to sentence David Barnett to death. Eighteen years later, after learning horrific details of the physical and sexual abuse to which Barnett had been subjected as a small child, Andrew Dazey — the jury foreman in Barnett’s trial — says “[t]here’s no way” he would have voted for death. At trial, Barnett’s lawyer presented some evidence of his client’s abuse, mental illness, and suicide attempts. However, he failed to present at least 11…

Prosecutors across the country are seeking the death penalty less frequently and in recent interviews two district attorneys, one from Texas and one from Pennsylvania, have given some of their reasons why. Randall County, Texas District Attorney James Farren (pictured) told KFDA-TV in Amarillo that his experience handling one particularly lengthy and costly capital case has changed how he will make decisions in future cases that are eligible for the death penalty. He said that his office has…

For the third time in two years, the Delaware Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of a death row inmate because his trial was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. On December 14, the court ordered a retrial for Chauncey Starling, who was convicted in 2003 of killing two people in a Wilmington barber shop, in part because prosecutors had failed to disclose that they had dropped charges against a key witness for violating his parole. Instead, prosecutors informed defense counsel that those…

Although Georgia carried out 5 of the 28 executions in the U.S. in 2015, it imposed no new death sentences and a significantly changed legal landscape points to a “new Georgia” with the death penalty in decline. The Georgia legal publication, Daily Report, dubbed the decline in death sentences its “newsmaker of the year,” and explored the reasons for the change. Jerry Word, the division director of the Georgia Capital Defender, said that with the Defender’s early intervention initiative…

In a unanimous decision issued December 21, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld Gov. Tom Wolf’s (pictured) imposition of a moratorium on executions while he awaits the results of a legislative commission’s report on Pennsylvania’s death penalty. On February 13, 2015, Wolf issued a temporary reprieve to Terrance Williams and announced that he would put all executions on hold. At that time, he said that Pennsylvania’s “capital punishment system has significant and widely recognized defects” and…