Publications & Testimony

Recent exonerees sen­tenced by non-unan­i­­­mous juries (clock­wise from top left): Ralph Wright (FL), Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin (FL), Anthony Ray Hinton (AL), Clifford Williams (FL), Isaiah McCoy…

On September 6, 2023, a bipar­ti­san group of Ohio state rep­re­sen­ta­tives rein­tro­duced a bill that would abol­ish the death penal­ty and replace the pun­ish­ment with life in prison with­out parole. Legislators in Ohio have debat­ed the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for near­ly a decade, but this renewed effort comes after state sen­a­tors intro­duced Senate Bill 101 ear­li­er in the year, which would also abol­ish the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Among the pri­ma­ry spon­sors of these…

Robert Roberson with daugh­ter Nikki. Courtesy of the…

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…