Publications & Testimony

Edward Montour, the defen­dant accused of killing cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer Eric Autobee (pic­tured) in a Colorado prison, agreed to plead guilty on March 6 to first degree mur­der in exchange for a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Autobee’s fam­i­ly had opposed the pros­e­cu­tion’s deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty for Montour, stand­ing in wit­ness in front of the cour­t­house dur­ing jury selec­tion, and ask­ing the judge to…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row, USA shows the total death row pop­u­la­tion con­tin­u­ing to decline in size. The U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion decreased from 3,108 on April 1, 2013, to 3,095 on July 1, 2013. The new total rep­re­sent­ed a 12% decrease from 10 years ear­li­er, when the death row pop­u­la­tion was 3,517. The states with the largest death rows were California (733), Florida (412), Texas…

David Floyd, a Republican state rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Kentucky, recent­ly intro­duced a bill to repeal the state’s death penal­ty, argu­ing that the law was incom­pat­i­ble with con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. Writing in the Louisville Courier-Journal, Floyd said his reli­gious views ini­tial­ly caused him to oppose the death penal­ty, but he made a broad­er prag­mat­ic case for repeal from a con­ser­v­a­tive per­spec­tive. He point­ed to val­ues such as respect for life, limiting…

New evi­dence in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham sug­gests Texas may have exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man in 2004. The key evi­dence pre­sent­ed against Willingham at tri­al was from an arson ​“expert,” who said the fire that killed Willingham’s chil­dren was inten­tion­al­ly set. That evi­dence has since been dis­cred­it­ed by a series of oth­er experts who con­clud­ed the evi­dence did not sup­port arson. Now attor­neys for the Innocence Project have uncovered a…

On February 24, the U.S. Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly ordered an Alabama court to recon­sid­er the case of Anthony Hinton, who has main­tained his inno­cence since he was sen­tenced to death 28 years ago. Mr. Hinton’s lawyer wrong­ly believed that he could spend only $1,000 on a firearms expert dur­ing the tri­al, and as a result, hired a wit­ness whom he knew was unqual­i­fied, and who the Court said was ​“bad­ly dis­cred­it­ed” by the pros­e­cu­tion. Hinton’s appellate lawyers…

In an op-ed in the Seattle Times, two for­mer Washington state cor­rec­tions offi­cials voiced their sup­port of Gov. Jay Inslee’s deci­sion to put exe­cu­tions on hold. Dick Morgan (pic­tured, L), a for­mer Director of Prisons, and Eldon Vail (pic­tured, R), for­mer Secretary of the Washington Department of Corrections, wrote about their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the state’s 5 exe­cu­tions, say­ing, ​“We have wit­nessed vis­i­bly shak­en staff car­ry out a ques­tion­able law that…

In a dis­sent from a deci­sion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit allow­ing Missouri’s exe­cu­tion of Michael Taylor on February 26, three judges sharply crit­i­cized the secre­cy of Missouri’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col as a vio­la­tion of Taylor’s right to due process. The dis­senters would have stayed the exe­cu­tion to allow Taylor to obtain infor­ma­tion about the source of the execution…

Dr. Allen Ault, the for­mer war­den for Georgia​’s exe­cu­tions, recent­ly spoke about the lin­ger­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of car­ry­ing out the death penal­ty. Ault, who retired in 1995, said, ​“I still have night­mares. [Execution is] the most pre­med­i­tat­ed form of mur­der you can pos­si­bly imag­ine and it stays in your psy­che for­ev­er.” He said he felt guilt after the elec­tro­cu­tion of a men­tal­ly dis­abled juve­nile offend­er, who devel­oped a deep sense of contrition during…

According to a recent study by Professor Katherine Beckett of the University of Washington, jurors in Washington are three times more like­ly to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence for a black defen­dant than for a white defen­dant in a sim­i­lar case. The dis­par­i­ty in sen­tenc­ing occurred despite the fact that pros­e­cu­tors were slight­ly more like­ly to seek the death penal­ty against white…

On March 3, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argu­ments in Hall v. Florida, a case address­ing the strict stan­dard for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty that Florida uses to deter­mine if inmates are exempt from exe­cu­tion. Under the Court’s 2002 deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia, indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties (men­tal retar­da­tion) are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly barred from receiv­ing the death penal­ty. The decision…