Publications & Testimony

Jeffrey Hutchinson is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Florida on May 1, 2025, despite a long­stand­ing men­tal ill­ness and his attorney’s claim that he is men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent. On April 24, 2025, attor­neys for the Gulf War vet­er­an filed a motion in Bradford County Circuit Court seek­ing a stay of his sched­uled exe­cu­tion and request­ing an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to assess their client’s com­pe­ten­cy. Mr. Hutchinson has suf­fered from a delu­sion­al dis­or­der for decades, with a…

On April 24, 2025, Louisiana District Court Judge Alvin Sharp set aside Jimmie Duncan’s first-degree mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Mr. Duncan was sen­tenced to death for the 1993 death of his girlfriend’s tod­dler large­ly based on faulty bite mark evi­dence. Judge Sharp, in a deci­sion that came after a September 2024 evi­den­tiary hear­ing, held that expert tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed dur­ing this hear­ing demon­strat­ed the bite mark analy­sis used against Mr. Duncan is​“no…

On April 21, 2025, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis, 88, died fol­low­ing a series of health fail­ures. Pope Francis, the first Roman Catholic pon­tiff from Latin America, was an out­spo­ken advo­cate for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. In August 2018, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis for­mal­ly changed the offi­cial Catholic Church teach­ing on the death penal­ty, call­ing the prac­tice​“an attack on the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty of the per­son,” adding that it is…

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and sev­er­al oth­er orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing a group of for­mer­ly fed­er­al­ly death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers filed a fed­er­al law­suit on April 16, 2025 seek­ing to pre­vent their trans­fer to the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, known as​“ADX.” The trans­fers were threat­ened by the Department of Justice in response to President Donald Trump’s January 20^th Executive Order 14164, which…

On April 11, 2025, Judge Colonel Matthew McCall ruled that con­fes­sions elicit­ed from Ammar al-Baluchi, accused of con­spir­ing in the September 11^th ter­ror­ism attacks, were the result of tor­ture car­ried out by the CIA and as a result can­not be used against Mr. al-Baluchi in any legal pro­ceed­ing. According to Col. McCall, Mr. al-Baluchi invol­un­tar­i­ly incrim­i­nat­ed him­self in 2007 after exten­sive​“psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tion­ing” through tor­ture and abuse during his…

On April 10, 2025, attor­neys for Tennessee death row pris­on­ers Oscar Smith and Byron Black called on Governor Bill Lee to issue a tem­po­rary reprieve in their cas­es. In their let­ter, the attor­neys ask Gov. Lee​“to pause all exe­cu­tions in Tennessee until March 1, 2026,” to per­mit a pend­ing case chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s new pen­to­bar­bi­tal lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure to be decid­ed. In late December 2024, the Tennessee Department of Corrections…

According to Amnesty International’s Annual Death Penalty Report, 15 coun­tries car­ried out 1,518 known exe­cu­tions in 2024, con­sti­tut­ing the low­est num­ber of exe­cut­ing coun­tries for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year and the high­est record­ed exe­cu­tion fig­ure since 2015, dri­ven by increas­es in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. 46 coun­tries imposed 2,087 new death sen­tences in 2024, a 14% decrease from the pri­or year; how­ev­er, changes in the acces­si­bil­i­ty of information…