Publications & Testimony

On September 5, 2023, Jesse Johnson (pic­tured) was released from Marion County Jail in Oregon when pros­e­cu­tors for­mal­ly declined to retry him for the 1998 mur­der of Harriet Thompson. Mr. Johnson was con­vict­ed of Ms. Thompson’s mur­der in 2004 and sen­tenced to death. In ask­ing the Marion County Circuit Court to dis­miss the case against Mr. Johnson, the coun­ty District Attorney’s office stat­ed that​“based upon the amount of time that has passed and the unavailability of…

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On August 4, a South Korean nation­al con­vict­ed of drug-traf­­fick­­ing was exe­cut­ed in China, accord­ing to South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who added dur­ing a press con­fer­ence that this exe­cu­tion was​“unre­lat­ed to the cur­rent bilat­er­al rela­tions” between the two nations. This was the first time a South Korean nation­al was exe­cut­ed in China for drug-traf­­fick­­ing since 2014, when four…

Attorneys for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a motion on August 30 to re-open her appeals based on a recent deci­sion from the Tennessee Supreme Court. In 2022, the Court ruled in State v. Booker that manda­to­ry life sen­tences in homi­cide cas­es are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al when imposed on juve­niles, draw­ing on U.S. Supreme Court prece­dent that held that juve­niles are less mature, more vul­ner­a­ble to peer pres­sure, and gen­er­al­ly less culpable…

Dr.

On August 30, 2023, the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals affirmed a low­er court’s rul­ing that for­mer­ly death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Pervis Payne can serve his two life sen­tences con­cur­rent­ly, mak­ing him eli­gi­ble to apply for parole in less than four years. Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan resen­tenced Mr. Payne in 2022 to two life sen­tences with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole after pros­e­cu­tors con­ced­ed that they could not dis­prove Mr. Payne’s claim that he is…

Former Denver Chief Deputy District Attorney Craig Silverman recent­ly wrote about why he changed his mind about sup­port­ing the death penal­ty and expressed new fears regard­ing its future use. His op-ed was pub­lished on August 29, 2023 in the Colorado Sun. Mr. Silverman writes that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was a promi­nent issue in his cam­paign for Denver District Attorney, and he him­self pros­e­cut­ed death penal­ty cas­es and pub­licly sup­port­ed its use. But he writes that he now has…

Larry Hudson has been added to DPIC’s Descriptions of Innocence page as a new­­ly-dis­­­cov­­ered death row exon­er­a­tion. Mr. Hudson was tried and sen­tenced to death for a rob­bery-homi­­cide in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1967, when he was 19 years old. He was exon­er­at­ed in 1993, when he was…

On August 25, 2023, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the state Supreme Court to set a date for Kenneth Smith to be exe­cut­ed using nitro­gen hypox­ia, a method that has nev­er been used in any state. The deci­sion to use this method comes after Alabama botched sev­er­al exe­cu­tions. Since 2018, when Alabama ini­tial­ly autho­rized the use of nitro­gen hypox­ia in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the state has been work­ing to estab­lish a pro­to­col for exe­cu­tions using this method.

In July 2023, legal schol­ars, a civ­il rights group, and var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions which advo­cate for vic­tims of domes­tic and gen­der-based vio­lence filed ami­cus briefs in sup­port of two death-sen­­tenced female pris­on­ers, Brenda Andrew and Brittany Holberg. Both ami­cus briefs allege that gen­der bias in their cases denied…