Publications & Testimony

On August 4, Ohio death row inmate Billy Slagle was found hanged in his prison cell, three days before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed. Slagle did not know that pros­e­cu­tors had recent­ly revealed that their office had been pre­pared to offer a plea deal to avoid a death sen­tence at the time of his tri­al 26 years ago. That deal was not con­veyed to Slagle by his attor­neys. This new infor­ma­tion was part of a request for a stay of exe­cu­tion sent to the Ohio Supreme…

On August 1, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced its remain­ing sup­ply of pen­to­bar­bi­tal, used for lethal injec­tions, expires in September, and it is unsure where to obtain more. The drug’s man­u­fac­tur­er, Lundbeck, Inc., has barred dis­tri­b­u­tion to states intend­ing to use the drug in…

Criminal cas­es in the U.S. Military are con­duct­ed in spe­cial courts and under laws that dif­fer from the rest of the coun­try’s jus­tice sys­tem. Executions in this sys­tem are extreme­ly rare. There have been no exe­cu­tions since 1961. ​“The mil­i­tary is a com­mu­ni­ty of sol­i­dar­i­ty, a broth­er­hood and sis­ter­hood, all to its own,” said Teresa Norris, a for­mer mil­i­tary defense lawyer who still rep­re­sents a sol­dier on death row. ​“There is a real reluc­tance to exe­cute fel­low sol­diers unless…

The fed­er­al death penal­ty is con­tro­ver­sial because it can be applied even in the 18 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico that have elect­ed not to have cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in their own law. Out of respect for the peo­ple of Rhode Island–a non-death penal­ty state – the gov­er­nor, Lincoln Chafee (pic­tured), resist­ed turn­ing over a defen­dant in 2011 to face the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The defen­dant, Jason Pleau, agreed to plead guilty to a series of…

Judge Boyce Martin took the occa­sion of his final death-penal­ty deci­sion from the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals to sharply crit­i­cize cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in this coun­try. While uphold­ing the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of the defen­dant, Harold Nichols, Judge Martin said, ​“I con­tin­ue to con­demn the use of the death penal­ty as an arbi­trary, biased, and bro­ken crim­i­nal jus­tice tool.” He not­ed that the many years since Nichols’s con­vic­tion in 1990 have con­sumed ​“count­less…

UPDATE: Ferguson was exe­cut­ed on Aug. 5. Florida has set an August 5 exe­cu­tion date for John Ferguson, a death row inmate who has suf­fered from severe men­tal ill­ness for more than four decades. As far back as 1965, Ferguson was found to expe­ri­ence visu­al hal­lu­ci­na­tions. He was sent to men­tal insti­tu­tions and was diag­nosed as para­noid schiz­o­phrenic, delu­sion­al, and aggres­sive. In 1975, a men­tal health doc­tor described Ferguson as ​“dan­ger­ous and can­not be…

After ear­li­er vot­ing to deny death row inmate Willie Manning access to DNA test­ing, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed itself on July 23 and cleared the way for the test­ing of evi­dence in Manning’s case. Manning has main­tained his inno­cence since his 1994 con­vic­tion of the mur­ders of two col­lege stu­dents. His renewed request for test­ing was sup­port­ed by let­ters from the Department of Justice and the FBI, which are con­duct­ing a review of foren­sic testimony…

On July 24, Ronell Wilson was re-sen­tenced to death by a fed­er­al jury in New York. Despite numer­ous cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions by the Department of Justice, no oth­er per­son in the state has been giv­en the death penal­ty since the fed­er­al death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1988. New York’s state death penal­ty law was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the state Court of Appeals in 2004. By 2007, all sev­en of those sen­tenced to death under the state law had their sen­tences overturned.

A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union, ​“A Death Before Dying: Solitary Confinement on Death Row,” con­tains a sur­vey of the con­di­tions on death rows across the coun­try and offers a com­pre­hen­sive review of the seri­ous impli­ca­tions of sub­ject­ing inmates to soli­tary con­fine­ment. The report reveals that most death row pris­on­ers are housed in tiny cells, rang­ing from 36 – 100 square feet, rough­ly the size of an aver­age bath­room; 93% of states lock up their death row…