Publications & Testimony

The Alabama Supreme Court announced a change to its rules of appel­late pro­ce­dure on January 12, 2023, elim­i­nat­ing auto­mat­ic plain error review for tri­al errors in death penal­ty cas­es. This new rule removes a sig­nif­i­cant safe­guard for cap­i­tal defen­dants’ rights, which had been in place since Alabama rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1976. Without the review, cap­i­tal defen­dants who were erro­neous­ly con­vict­ed or sen­tenced could spend many more years on death row before the error is…

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) has reset the state’s exe­cu­tion sched­ule, slow­ing down the pace at which the 25-per­son exe­cu­tion spree it autho­rized in July 2022 would move…

Executions in Arizona are effec­tive­ly on hold after Governor Katie Hobbs (pic­tured) ordered a review of the state’s exe­cu­tion process fol­low­ing three botched exe­cu­tions in 2022 and Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a motion to with­draw the state’s only pend­ing request for a death war­rant. The two state offi­cials, elect­ed in the November midterm elec­tions against oppo­nents who false­ly claimed the 2020 Presidential elec­tion had been stolen,…

A Kansas cap­i­tal defen­dant is chal­leng­ing the prosecution’s deci­sion to pur­sue the death penal­ty in his case, invok­ing a height­ened stan­dard of review the Kansas con­sti­tu­tion applies to infringe­ments of fundamental…

A Russian nation­al on the U.S. fed­er­al death row has filed a civ­il rights law­suit chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al government’s use of auto­mat­ic and pro­longed soli­tary con­fine­ment to house indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to…

Alabama death-row pris­on­er Kenneth Smith spent four hours on November 17, 2022 strapped to an exe­cu­tion gur­ney while state pros­e­cu­tors attempt­ed to lift a stay of exe­cu­tion issued by a fed­er­al appeals court and his exe­cu­tion team repeat­ed­ly failed in attempts to set the intra­venous exe­cu­tion line intend­ed to kill him. He was left strapped to the gur­ney after prison offi­cials called off the botched exe­cu­tion, unaware that he was not to be put to death that…

Tennessee will not resume exe­cu­tions until it fix­es sys­temic prob­lems with the admin­is­tra­tion of its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, Governor Bill Lee has announced. ​“It’s a very impor­tant issue that has to be done cor­rect­ly,” Lee told reporters on January 5, 2023. ​“And we will take the time to fix the pro­to­col and to make cer­tain that we don’t move for­ward until everything’s in…

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the denial of relief to a Texas death-row pris­on­er whose request for new tri­al is sup­port­ed by local pros­e­cu­tors. In a two-sen­tence deci­sion, the Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari to Areli Escobar, vacat­ed the judg­ment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA), and sent the case back for recon­sid­er­a­tion. The Court’s sum­ma­ry rever­sal relied on Travis County pros­e­cu­tors’ admis­sion that Escobar’s con­vic­tion is…

Oklahoma has car­ried out the first of eleven exe­cu­tions sched­uled for 2023, admin­is­ter­ing a lethal injec­tion to death-row pris­on­er Scott Eizember on January 12. The exe­cu­tion was a con­tin­u­a­tion of a 29-month exe­cu­tion spree between August 2022 and December 2024 in which the state intends to put 25 pris­on­ers to death — 58% of the state’s death…