Publications & Testimony

Will Speer, cen­ter, seat­ed, at his…

Photo used under Creative Commons license courtesy The…

In August 2023, Alabama released the first-ever exe­cu­tion pro­to­col for nitro­gen hypox­ia, an untest­ed exe­cu­tion method in which pris­on­ers will be put to death by suf­fo­ca­tion as they are forced to breathe pure nitro­gen gas. Alabama’s heav­i­ly redact­ed pro­to­col pro­vides that pris­on­ers will be fit­ted with a mask and breath­ing tube to con­trol the gas, which will slow­ly deprive them of oxy­gen. However, use of this untest­ed method may also pose dan­gers to spiritual…

In July 2020, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice, under the direc­tion of Attorney General Bill Barr, resumed fed­er­al exe­cu­tions for the first time in 17 years. Over the course of the fol­low­ing six months, 13 fed­er­al death row pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed. During those six months, the WFIU News team was grant­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to report on and wit­ness all 13 exe­cu­tions at United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute in Indiana. In the time since these exe­cu­tions, the…

The Death Penalty Information Center has updat­ed its Death Penalty Census, a data­base of every death sen­tence imposed since 1972. The data­base now con­tains infor­ma­tion accu­rate as of January 1, 2022, inclu­sive of the 50^th year of the mod­ern death penal­ty. The Census con­tains infor­ma­tion on 9,820 death sen­tences imposed on 8,842 defen­dants. It includes the name, race, and gen­der of each defen­dant, along with the region, state, coun­ty, and year in which the…

On October 18, 2023, the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole delayed the sched­uled exe­cu­tion for Thomas Creech in order to pro­vide him with a full clemen­cy hear­ing. A date for the hear­ing has not yet been sched­uled. An Ada County, Idaho judge pre­vi­ous­ly issued a death war­rant for Mr. Creech, who has been on death row for near­ly 44 years, set­ting his exe­cu­tion for November 8, 2023. The Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) announced that they have secured the appropriate…

DOC…

On October 13, 2023, after a brief admin­is­tra­tive hear­ing, the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole denied clemen­cy hear­ings for five of the 56 death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers seek­ing clemen­cy before Governor John Bel Edwards leaves office in January 2024. The four-mem­ber pan­el split its vote on four of the five appli­ca­tions, with a major­i­ty deny­ing the fifth appli­ca­tion on the grounds that Winthrop Eaton is unlike­ly to be exe­cut­ed because he is mentally…

In a new law review arti­cle, Professor Anna VanCleave of the University of Connecticut School of Law argues that the​“height­ened stan­dards” of due process pro­tec­tion for cap­i­tal defen­dants, required under the Eighth Amendment, are in prac­tice no more than​“a veneer of legit­i­ma­cy and pro­ce­dur­al cau­tion” that fail to vin­di­cate defen­dants’ rights. Professor VanCleave found that in the absence of clear guid­ance from the Supreme Court as to the actu­al meaning of…