Publications & Testimony

Paula Cooper, who was 15 years old at the time of her crime, and the youngest per­son ever sen­tenced to death in Indiana, will be released from prison on June 17, twen­ty-sev­en years after her con­vic­tion for the mur­der of 78-year-old Ruth Pelke. Her case received inter­na­tion­al atten­tion, spark­ing a cam­paign that led to the com­mu­ta­tion of her death sen­tence to 60 years in prison. An appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court received over 2 mil­lion sig­na­tures from around the world.

On June 13, for­mer Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton told mem­bers of an Ohio task force review­ing the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem that her views on the death penal­ty have moved from sup­port to…

On June 4, a fed­er­al mag­is­trate ruled that the Louisiana Department of Safety and Corrections must reveal the details of the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. The rul­ing reject­ed the argu­ment that dis­clos­ing the pro­to­col would raise ​“seri­ous secu­ri­ty con­cerns.” The rul­ing by Judge Stephen Riedlinger was on a motion relat­ed to the law­suit filed by death row inmates Jessie Hoffman and Christopher Sepulvado, who con­tend­ed that due process requires they be ful­ly informed about…

On June 10, three inmates on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) filed a law­suit in fed­er­al court against the Department of Public Safety and Corrections for ​“appalling and extreme con­di­tions… as a result of extreme heat.” The inmates request­ed that jail offi­cials address the unsafe con­di­tions in the death row facil­i­ty. According to the law­suit, the con­di­tions pris­on­ers suf­fer each sum­mer con­sti­tute cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment under the Eighth Amendment.

In a recent op-ed in the Baltimore Sun, for­mer FBI Director William Sessions (pic­tured) under­scored the impor­tance of reli­able FBI foren­sic analy­sis in con­vict­ing the guilty and exon­er­at­ing the inno­cent. Sessions pro­vid­ed the exam­ple of Willie Jerome Manning, who received a last-minute stay of exe­cu­tion in Mississippi in order to allow time to con­duct test­ing on DNA evi­dence that could exon­er­ate him. Manning was con­vict­ed in 1994 based on FBI…

UPDATE: Gov. Mary Fallin refused to grant clemen­cy to Davis. On June 6, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy for Brian Darrell Davis, who is fac­ing exe­cu­tion on June 25. The board vot­ed 4 – 1 to rec­om­mend that Davis’s death sen­tence be com­mut­ed to life in prison with­out parole. The parole board rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy after Davis took respon­si­bil­i­ty for the crime and apol­o­gized to the fam­i­ly of the vic­tim. ​“A weight lift­ed off…

On June 5, leg­is­la­tors in North Carolina vot­ed to repeal the Racial Justice Act, which had allowed death row inmates to chal­lenge their sen­tences using sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial bias. Since the law took effect in 2009, most of the inmates fac­ing exe­cu­tion in North Carolina appealed their sen­tence under the law. In 2012, Marcus Robinson, who was the first defen­dant to receive a hear­ing under the RJA, was re-sen­tenced to life with­out parole due to evidence…

On May 30, California’s First District Court of Appeals upheld a Superior Court rul­ing that found the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col invalid because the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation failed to com­ply with the require­ments of the Administrative Procedures Act. A spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that no deci­sion has been made on whether the rul­ing will be appealed to the California Supreme Court or if the…

In a forth­com­ing arti­cle in the Washington and Lee Law Review, Ty Alper (pic­tured), Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, exam­ines how recent U.S. Supreme Court deci­sions may affect the abil­i­ty of defen­dants to raise claims of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel. Although the right to effec­tive coun­sel is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed, most defen­dants, espe­cial­ly those charged with non-cap­i­tal crimes, do not have ade­quate oppor­tu­ni­ties during…

A June 3 edi­to­r­i­al in the Sun Sentinel called on Florida Governor Rick Scott (pic­tured) to veto the Timely Justice Act, a bill passed by the leg­is­la­ture ear­li­er this year that would accel­er­ate exe­cu­tions. The bill requires the gov­er­nor to sign a death war­rant with­in 30 days of a Supreme Court review, with an exe­cu­tion to fol­low with­in 180 days. According to the edi­to­r­i­al, flaws in the sys­tem, evi­denced by death row exon­er­a­tions, should be sufficient…