Publications & Testimony

On May 25, 2023, 12 death-qual­i­fied jurors and six alter­nates were select­ed in the fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­al of Robert Bowers, who is charged with killing 11 wor­ship­pers at a Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue in 2018. Prosecutors struck all the Black, Hispanic, and Jewish venire mem­bers. As tes­ti­mo­ny begins on May 30, some vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers have expressed sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, while others have…

“[W]e have come over time to see the flaws in our nation’s jus­tice sys­tem and to view the state’s death penal­ty laws in par­tic­u­lar as legal­ly and moral­ly trou­bling,” wrote two for­mer gov­er­nors of Alabama in an op-ed for the Washington Post. Republican Robert Bentley (pic­tured, right) and Democrat Don Siegelman (pic­tured, left) agree that the 146 peo­ple whose death sen­tences were imposed by non-unan­i­mous juries or judi­cial over­ride should have their sen­tences com­mut­ed. ​“We missed our…

Former fed­er­al Oklahoma pros­e­cu­tors Patrick Ryan and Daniel Webber co-authored an edi­to­r­i­al in The Oklahoman on May 17, 2023 express­ing seri­ous con­cerns about Richard Glossip’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. The writ­ers not­ed that a prosecutor’s duty ​“is not to win a case, but to ensure jus­tice is done,” and con­clud­ed that ​“the state did not fol­low these fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples in obtain­ing Richard Glossip’s 1998 and 2004 con­vic­tions and death sen­tences.” The for­mer prosecutors collectively…

Iran con­tin­ues to use the death penal­ty in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, includ­ing death sen­tences for crimes fail­ing to meet the ​“most seri­ous” crime thresh­old, the use of tor­ture, and per­form­ing pub­lic exe­cu­tions. According to Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), there have been at least 277 exe­cu­tions thus far in 2023, with at least 106 exe­cu­tions in the first 20 days of May, con­sti­tut­ing the ​“blood­i­est month” in more than five…

A May 20, 2023 edi­to­r­i­al in a lead­ing med­ical aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal con­cludes that physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions ​“goes against the eth­i­cal foun­da­tion of the physi­cian’s role” and argues that doc­tors and med­ical asso­ci­a­tions should oppose capital…

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings con­tin­ued its more than two-decade decline in the third quar­ter of last year, accord­ing to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) Summer 2022 quar­ter­ly cen­sus of death rows across the United…

UPDATE 2: On June 2, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit lift­ed the stay that had been imposed by the U.S. District Court, say­ing that the low­er court did not have juris­dic­tion to order the…

On May 11, attor­neys for Robert Roberson, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in Texas, filed a peti­tion for cer­tio­rari to the Supreme Court ask­ing it to reverse the deci­sion of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA). Mr. Roberson’s con­vic­tion for the mur­der of his daugh­ter Nikki was based on the so-called ​“Shaken Baby Syndrome” which has now been debunked by new sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical evi­dence. The TCCA dis­re­gard­ed this and oth­er evi­dence that showed his daughter’s death was attributable to…

According to an annu­al death penal­ty report by Amnesty International, 2022 saw the high­est num­ber of record­ed exe­cu­tions since 2017, pri­mar­i­ly due to increas­es in just a hand­ful of coun­tries in the Middle East and North Africa. The report also not­ed a slight decrease in the num­ber of new­ly imposed death sen­tences world­wide. In its report, Amnesty says use of the death penal­ty in sev­er­al coun­tries con­tin­ues to vio­late inter­na­tion­al law with pub­lic exe­cu­tions, exe­cu­tions of juve­niles or those…

Over a decade ago, four audio tapes and hun­dreds of exe­cu­tion doc­u­ments were donat­ed to the Library of the University of Virginia by a for­mer Virginia cor­rec­tion­al employ­ee. National Public Radio (NPR) aired excerpts from those long-hid­den tapes in January 2023. Shortly there­after, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) then request­ed the return of all the mate­ri­als. NPR now reports that only two of the six box­es of mate­r­i­al remain avail­able for view­ing at the…