Publications & Testimony

On March 4, Houston District Judge Kevin Fine grant­ed a pre­tri­al motion in a cap­i­tal case and declared the death penal­ty in Texas uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Judge Fine said the state’s law vio­lates a defendant’s right to due process because of the risk of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son. The judge based his rul­ing on stud­ies around the coun­try and in Texas that indi­cat­ed, ​“it can only be con­clud­ed that inno­cent peo­ple have been executed….Are you will­ing to have your…

On March 3, a fed­er­al District Court barred the re-pros­e­cu­tion of for­mer Ohio death row inmate Joe D’Ambrosio (pic­tured) for the mur­der of Tony Klann over 22 years ago. The court had ruled in 2006 that state pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly with­held evi­dence about their star wit­ness that could have exon­er­at­ed D’Ambrosio at his 1989 tri­al. That rul­ing led to D’Ambrosio’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence being vacat­ed, and he was even­tu­al­ly released on bond pending a…

On March 2, Washington became the sec­ond state to switch its lethal injec­tion method from the three-drug cock­tail used in almost all states to a one-drug pro­to­col. Ohio was the first state to change to the sin­gle-drug pro­to­col after the failed exe­cu­tion attempt involv­ing Romell Broom. Broom was ulti­mate­ly removed from the exe­cu­tion cham­ber when the cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers were unable to com­plete the exe­cu­tion. In Washington, the one-drug…

Gaile Owens is cur­rent­ly on death row in Tennessee and await­ing a deci­sion from the Tennessee Supreme Court on a request to reduce her sen­tence to life. Owens’s attor­neys have asked the state’s high court to remove the death penal­ty because her case presents unique cir­cum­stances that war­rant the rare move. Owens may face exe­cu­tion soon for solic­it­ing the 1985 mur­der of her hus­band, Ronald Owens, a man she said repeat­ed­ly abused her. Sidney Porterfield, whom…

On February 24, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals over­turned the death sen­tence of Charles Dean Hood because the jury was improp­er­ly instruct­ed about poten­tial­ly mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence at his tri­al. Hood’s case more recent­ly made nation­al news when a pri­or extra­mar­i­tal affair between the tri­al judge and the pros­e­cu­tor was revealed. In 2008, even after the judge and the pros­e­cu­tor admit­ted to their inti­mate rela­tion­ship, the Court of Criminal Appeals concluded…

On February 22, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear, and then sum­mar­i­ly reversed, a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion that would have giv­en a Texas defen­dant a new tri­al based on improp­er jury selec­tion. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had ruled that Anthony Haynes should be retried or released because a prospec­tive juror was improp­er­ly exclud­ed based on the juror’s race. Two dif­fer­ent judges had presided over the jury selec­tion; one actually…

A bill that would have end­ed the death penal­ty in Kansas lost by a tie vote of 20 – 20 in the state Senate on February 19. The bill would have replaced the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Republican Senator Carolyn McGinn, the orig­i­nal spon­sor of the leg­is­la­tion, argued for repeal, point­ing to the high cost of the death penal­ty: ​“It costs half a mil­lion dol­lars, or 70 per­cent more, to try a death penal­ty case than a…