Publications & Testimony

On January 20, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the death sen­tence for Holly Wood for the 1993 shoot­ing of his for­mer girl­friend in Alabama, despite the fact that the attor­ney work­ing on the penal­ty phase of the case failed to inves­ti­gate or tell the jury about Wood’s bor­der­line men­tal retar­da­tion. A fed­er­al District Court had over­turned his death sen­tence because of the inad­e­quate per­for­mance of the inexperienced lawyer,…

On January 19, the U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari and reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Wellons v. Hall, order­ing the low­er court to re-exam­ine the appeal of Marcus Wellons, who received the death penal­ty for a 1989 rape and mur­der in Georgia. The Court’s per curi­am opin­ion described ​“unusu­al events going on behind the scenes” at Wellons’ tri­al, includ­ing con­tacts out­side the court­room between the…

On January 14, and almost 30 years after the crime, the Florida Supreme Court crit­i­cized the state for ​“law­less con­duct” and vacat­ed the death sen­tence of Paul Beasley Johnson because ​“the record here is so rife with evi­dence of pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct that we have no choice but to grant relief.” Because of pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment and the noto­ri­ety of the crime, Governor Charlie Crist signed a death war­rant for Johnson in…

California recent­ly released its revised lethal injec­tion guide­lines, fol­low­ing a June pub­lic hear­ing on the pro­to­col. The 25-page doc­u­ment indi­cates small revi­sions, out­lin­ing such items as to when the cur­tains remain open in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber to def­i­n­i­tions of the term ​“chap­lain” and ​“lethal injec­tion room.” Natasha Minsker, the Death Penalty Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California called the revi­sions super­fi­cial. Minsker added, ​“In the…

On January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Smith v. Spisak. After Frank Spisak was sen­tenced to death in Ohio and his ini­tial appeals were denied, he filed a habeas cor­pus peti­tion claim­ing that: 1) the jury instruc­tions and ver­dict forms used at his tri­al uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required the jury to be unan­i­mous in choos­ing any mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors; and 2) his attor­ney’s clos­ing argu­ment was so inad­e­quate as to…

Louisiana has seen a steep decline in exe­cu­tions com­pared to pre­vi­ous decades, with only three exe­cu­tions in the last ten years. This is in stark con­trast to the eight men who were elec­tro­cut­ed with­in the span of 11 weeks in 1987, and it fol­lows a nation­wide trend of declin­ing exe­cu­tions and impo­si­tion of death…