Publications & Testimony

On July 23, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unan­i­mous­ly affirmed a low­er court rul­ing that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to ful­fill its duties under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) when it per­mit­ted with­out inspec­tion the impor­ta­tion of for­eign drugs for use in lethal injec­tions. The Court con­clud­ed, ​“The FDCA impos­es manda­to­ry duties upon the agency charged with its enforce­ment. The FDA act­ed in…

Andrew Lackey is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Alabama on July 25, despite suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness his entire life. Lackey asked for an exe­cu­tion date, even though nei­ther his state nor fed­er­al appeals have been com­plet­ed. Despite exten­sive evi­dence of seri­ous men­tal prob­lems, the tri­al judge refused to order an expert com­pe­ten­cy eval­u­a­tion, failed to inquire about med­ica­tions he is tak­ing and how they affect his men­tal state, and did not ask state…

On July 18, a Georgia Superior Court judge ruled that the state’s new law shield­ing the source of lethal injec­tion drugs inter­fered with Warren Hill​’s right to chal­lenge his method of exe­cu­tion and is there­fore prob­a­bly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. According to the law, infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to drugs used in exe­cu­tions is clas­si­fied as ​“con­fi­den­tial state secrets” and can­not be dis­closed. Judge Gail S. Tusan said the law ” ​“To be exe­cut­ed with­out being…

A Federal Bureau of Investigation review of more than 21,000 cas­es has revealed 27 death penal­ty cas­es in which the FBI’s foren­sic experts may have exag­ger­at­ed the sci­en­tif­ic con­clu­sions that could be drawn from their tes­ti­mo­ny, mis­tak­en­ly link­ing defen­dants to crimes they may not have com­mit­ted. It is pos­si­ble that some of these cas­es involve inmates who have already been exe­cut­ed. Under par­tic­u­lar scruti­ny is tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing hair evi­dence. Although FBI laboratory…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics recent­ly released its annu­al review of the death penal­ty in the U.S., focus­ing on 2011. The report not­ed the con­tin­ued decline in the use of the death penal­ty in recent years. In 2011, 80 new inmates were received under sen­tence of death, the low­est num­ber since 1973, and a 27% decrease from the year before. Executions also declined to 43, com­pared with 46 in 2010. The aver­age time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion in 2011 was 16.5 years, 20…

A com­mit­tee empan­eled by the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court made three pre­lim­i­nary rec­om­men­da­tions at its June meet­ing for reform­ing the state’s death penal­ty. The pan­el, which con­sists of pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, judges, and aca­d­e­m­ic experts, vot­ed to rec­om­mend a reduc­tion in the scope of crimes eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, the cre­ation of a statewide pan­el to decide on seek­ing a death sen­tence, and the enact­ment of a Racial Justice Act. The restric­tion of…

UPDATE: Warren Hill was grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion by a Georgia court just hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on July 15. A hear­ing is sched­uled for July 18 to con­sid­er chal­lenges to a new state law that shields the iden­ti­ty of the lethal injec­tion drug’s man­u­fac­tur­er and the pre­scrib­ing physi­cian from the pub­lic. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 15, 2013). As a peti­tion on behalf of Georgia death row inmate Warren…

On June 10, California announced it would no longer try to defend its cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. In May, a court rul­ing inval­i­dat­ed the state’s three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col because state offi­cials failed to fol­low admin­is­tra­tive rules in adopt­ing the pro­to­col. Governor Jerry Brown and oth­er offi­cials will instead pro­ceed with devel­op­ing a sin­gle-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col sim­i­lar to those adopt­ed recent­ly in states like Ohio, Arizona, and Washington.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel recent­ly said the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem was ​“com­plete­ly bro­ken” and rec­om­mend­ed it be abol­ished if the state’s exe­cu­tion method isn’t changed. McDaniel said, ​“It’s time for the pol­i­cy mak­ers of Arkansas to say, ​‘Do we con­tin­ue with a bro­ken sys­tem and throw­ing mon­ey and resources at essen­tial­ly point­less lit­i­ga­tion, or do we mod­i­fy the sys­tem?’ And there’s only real­ly two mod­i­fi­ca­tions that I see available —…

In the first half of 2013, six states car­ried out 18 exe­cu­tions. In the same peri­od last year, there were 23 exe­cu­tions in 8 states. The annu­al num­ber of exe­cu­tions has declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly from its peak in 1999, when 98 peo­ple were put to death. There were 43 exe­cu­tions in 2011 and 2012. Sixteen of this year’s exe­cu­tions (89%) have been in the South, with near­ly half in Texas (8). Eight of the defen­dants exe­cut­ed so far this year were black, and ten were white.