Publications & Testimony

On October 8, 2014 former death row inmate Manuel Velez (pictured with his son before his arrest) was freed from a Texas prison, following a “no contest” plea to a lesser charge on August 25. Velez had been convicted of killing his girlfriend’s one-year-old son but consistently maintained his complete innocence. Velez’s conviction was overturned in 2013 because his attorney failed to present evidence that the injuries leading to the child’s death were sustained while Velez was 1,000 miles away.

County Judge Michael P. Donnelly, a member of Ohio’s Death Penalty Task Force appointed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, recently called the costs of capital trials “astronomical.” He went on to say that a county’s budget may be a factor in decisions to seek the death penalty: “[W]ith 88 different prosecutors who have complete discretion on whether to pursue it or not, and you have to draw the inference that, in some counties, it’s not pursued because it’s just not economically…

On September 24, Pennsylvania reached a new milestone with the 250^th death-sentence reversal since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. The state has imposed approximately 412 death sentences since reinstatement. Only three prisoners were executed, and all three waived at least part of their appeals. There have been no executions in Pennsylvania for 15 years. Over 60% of all death sentences imposed in the state have been overturned by state or federal courts; 190 prisoners remain on death…

The U.S. Supreme Court will begin its 2014 – 15 term on October 6. One of the cases the Court will hear during its first month is Jennings v. Stephens, a Texas death penalty case involving ineffectiveness of counsel and whether a separate appeal is necessary for each such claim. Oral arguments will take place on October 15. The Court has been asked to review an appeal from Scott Panetti, another death row inmate from Texas, who may be mentally incompetent. Last year, the Supreme Court struck down…

An article in the most recent issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review examines the practice of excluding African-Americans from jury service, particularly in death penalty cases in North Carolina. In Bias in the Box, Dax-Devlon Ross notes, “Alongside the right to vote, the right to serve on a jury is an enduring pillar of our democracy….Nevertheless, there is perhaps no arena of public life where racial bias has been as broadly overlooked or casually tolerated as jury exclusion.” Ross traces the…

A county judge in Georgia denied relief for Warren Hill, a death row inmate whose diagnosed intellectual disabilities have failed to meet the state’s narrow standard for exemption from the death penalty. However, the judge encouraged the state Supreme Court to consider whether a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Hall v. Florida, should require Georgia to modify its standard. Chief Judge Thomas Wilson of Butts County said, “In light of the severity of the penalty in this case, this Court hopes…

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, has written a new book, Just Mercy, about his experiences defending the poor and the wrongfully convicted throughout the south. It includes the story of one of Stevenson’s first cases as a young lawyer, that of Walter McMillian, who was eventually exonerated and freed from death row. McMillian, a black man, had been convicted of the murder of a white woman in Monroeville, Alabama. His trial lasted just a day and a half…

is a death row inmate in Texas, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and believes he is at the center of a struggle between God and Satan. The state has continued to insist he is competent to be executed. Panetti represented himself at his trial, appearing in court wearing a cowboy outfit and making bizarre, rambling statements. He attempted to subpoena Jesus Christ, the pope, and 200 others. He was convicted and sentenced to death. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme…

An article in the latest edition of The Angolite, a magazine published by prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, tells the stories of the ten men who have been exonerated from death row in that state. The piece prominently features Glenn Ford, the state’s most recent inmate to be freed. Ford spent 30 years on death row before being released in 2014. Among the other cases described is that of John Thompson, who was freed after it was revealed that prosecutors intentionally…

Phillip Cheatham was represented at his death penalty trial by a lawyer who failed to develop a readily available alibi defense and portrayed Cheatham as a possible killer. The lawyer, Ira Dennis Hawver (pictured at his disbarment hearing, left), presented Cheatham as a drug-dealing killer who would not have left a witness alive to identify him and would have taken fewer shots to kill the victims. Hawyer admitted he might not have jumped through every “American Bar Association hoop” in…