Publications & Testimony

In a series of articles analyzing Pennsylvania’s death penalty, the Reading Eagle found that taxpayers have spent over $350 million on the death penalty over a period in which the state has carried out just three executions, all of inmates who dropped their appeals. Using data from a Maryland cost study, which concluded that death penalty cases cost $1.9 million more than similar cases in which the death penalty was not sought, the newspaper estimated that the cases of the 185 people on…

On December 11 District Judge Darlene Byrne ruled that the source of Texas’ lethal injection drugs is a matter of public record, and the state should release the information. Texas has been obtaining pentobarbital from an unnamed compounding pharmacy. The decision resulted from a suit filed earlier this year on behalf of death row inmates, two of whom have since been executed. Texas had been open about the source of its execution drugs until May, when Attorney General Greg Abbott decided that…

Attorneys for several inmates in Oklahoma have asked a federal court to stay their executions and presented new accounts of the botched execution of Clayton Lockett (pictured) as evidence the state’s execution procedure is unconstitutionally cruel. The recent filing included statements describing the execution from the warden, an attending paramedic, and a victims’ services advocate who witnessed the execution. Warden Anita Trammell called the execution, “a bloody mess,” and said, “I was kind…

On December 11, an Arizona appeals court dismissed charges against Debra Jean Milke and barred retrial. Milke spent 22 years on death row on chargers of arranging the 1989 murder of her 4‑year-old son. She was the first woman sentenced to death in Arizona since 1932. In 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit overturned Milke’s conviction because the prosecution had withheld evidence about misconduct committed by their primary witness, Phoenix Detective Armando Saldate, who…

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, three legal experts, including retired federal judge and Harvard Law School professor Nancy Gertner (pictured), wrote about the benefits of allowing accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. If Tsarnaev is convicted, they write, the penalty phase of his capital trial will put all attention on Tsarnaev’s life and background, rather than on the victims of the bombing. “Tsarnaev’s lawyers are…

A forthcoming article by University of Miami law professor Scott E. Sundby in the William & Mary Bill of Rights journal examines the “unreliability principle” established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons. The article defines the unreliability principle as, “if too great a risk exists that constitutionally protected mitigation cannot be properly comprehended and accounted for by the sentencer, the unreliability that is created means that the death penalty…

At a hearing on December 9, Kwame Ajamu (formerly Ronnie Bridgeman) was formally exonerated of the 1975 murder for which he was convicted and sentenced to death. Ajamu joins his brother, Wiley Bridgeman, and co-defendant, Ricky Jackson, on DPIC’s Exoneration List, becoming the 150^th death row exoneree since 1973. Ajamu, Bridgeman, and Jackson were convicted based on the testimony of a 12-year-old boy who recently admitted that he never saw the killing. Ajamu’s death sentence was reduced in 1978…

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari in Brumfield v. Cain, a death penalty case from Louisiana dealing with intellectual disability. Kevan Brumfield was sentenced to death prior to the Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), which banned the execution of defendants with intellectual disabilities. After that ruling, Brumfield filed a claim of intellectual disability in state court. The court denied him a hearing because the trial transcript showed no evidence of his…

Attorneys for Robert Holsey, an inmate on death row in Georgia, have filed a clemency petition before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Holsey is scheduled to be executed on December 9, despite the fact that the lawyer who represented him at trial drank a quart of vodka a day and failed to present key evidence during the sentencing phase of Holsey’s trial. The lawyer was later disbarred for embezzling clients’ money and admitted that he was not fit to represent Holsey. Holsey’s new attorneys…

On December 4, the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on HB 663, which would shield the identity of those who produce lethal injection drugs for the state. Previously, critics of the bill had warned that the measure could be unconstitutional because it interferes with the courts and violates the First Amendment right to free speech. Among those testifying at the committee hearing was Kevin Smith of the Society of Professional Journalists, who called the bill, “one of the most…