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 Court and unopposed by the…

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 executions. DPIC’s Executive Director, Richard Dieter, remarked, “What’s happening is a scramble by Texas and other states to find something to quickly get into the syringe, rather than a reasoned…

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 it’s absolutely…

Cert. granted and decided June 24, 2013 (per curiam) The Supreme Court granted the state’s petition for certiorari in this Arizona capital case, and held that the Ninth Circuit abused its discretion by failing to issue its mandate in accordance with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 41(d)(2)(D). Pursuant to that rule, “‘[t]he court of appeals must issue the mandate immediately when a copy of a Supreme Court order denying the petition for writ of certiorari is filed.” (emphasis by the Court).

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 charges including murder if he could be…

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 judicial hours…

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 released under any circumstances.”

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 by FBI experts. They have found 27…

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. Wilson was first sentenced to…

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 prisoners for 22 or…