Publications & Testimony

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Theodore B. Olson, for­mer U.S. Solicitor General from 2001 to 2004 dur­ing President George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion, called for a halt to the use of the death penal­ty against those impli­cat­ed in the ter­ror­ist attacks of 9/​11. He rec­om­mend­ed that the cap­i­tal pro­ceed­ings against the defen­dants being held in Guantánamo Bay be brought ​“to as rapid and just a con­clu­sion as…

In a let­ter to Governor Kay Ivey (pic­tured) of Alabama, over 170 local faith lead­ers from many denom­i­na­tions and tra­di­tions across the state asked her to com­mit to a ​“com­pre­hen­sive, inde­pen­dent, and exter­nal review of Alabama’s death penal­ty pro­ce­dures” in the wake of a series of botched exe­cu­tions. The church rep­re­sen­ta­tives thanked the gov­er­nor for paus­ing exe­cu­tions but urged her to ensure trans­paren­cy and inde­pen­dence in review­ing how Alabama performs…

Professor Craig Haney (pic­tured) of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Professor Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Karen Steele, a crim­i­nal defense attor­ney in Oregon, exam­ined age and race data from near­ly 9,000 death sen­tences imposed in the U.S. from 1972 to 2021. They found that the racial dis­par­i­ties that plague the death penal­ty were more pro­nounced in cas­es involv­ing juve­nile and late ado­les­cent defen­dants. Building on the find­ings of a…

On January 26, South Carolina’s Supreme Court ordered the state to turn over infor­ma­tion about its attempts to obtain lethal injec­tion drugs, as part of a suit chal­leng­ing aspects of the state’s meth­ods of…

“Speaking as a busi­ness leader, a proud, life­time Tennessean and a human being, it’s time for the state to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” wrote Mac Bartine, CEO of Knoxville-based tech com­pa­ny Smartria, in an op-ed for Knox News. Bartine described the find­ings of the 2022 inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into Tennessee’s exe­cu­tion prac­tices, which found that the state repeat­ed­ly failed to adhere to its own pro­to­col. ​“The report proved what we have known for years – that the death penal­ty has…

John Balentine (pic­tured) is a Texas death-row pris­on­er who was sen­tenced to death in 1999 for a triple mur­der. He had been sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on February 8, 2023, but a tem­po­rary reprieve has been grant­ed. His appel­late attor­neys have pre­sent­ed numer­ous instances of racial bias that may have affect­ed the pro­ceed­ings in his…

At the urg­ing of Governor Ron DeSantis, bills have been intro­duced in the Florida House and Senate that would allow death sen­tences even when the jury can­not come to a unan­i­mous ver­dict on the prop­er penal­ty. The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would also per­mit a pre­sid­ing judge to over­ride a jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion of life and impose a death sen­tence. Death sen­tences would be allowed if at least eight jurors agreed, cre­at­ing the low­est thresh­old in the nation for the impo­si­tion of a death sen­tence. Only…

Leonard Taylor (pic­tured) is a Missouri death-row pris­on­er who was con­vict­ed in 2008 of a quadru­ple mur­der that occurred in St. Louis in December 2004. His exe­cu­tion is sched­uled for February 7, 2023. Taylor has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence. Although Taylor’s attor­neys have dis­cov­ered new evi­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate his claim, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell announced that he would not ask a judge to hold an evi­den­tiary hear­ing in the…

The California Supreme Court grant­ed Nvwtohiyada Idehesdi Sequoyah (tried as and referred to in court doc­u­ments as Billy Ray Waldon) a new tri­al on January 23, 2023 after over­turn­ing his 1992 death sen­tence and con­vic­tion. Sequoyah was per­mit­ted to rep­re­sent him­self at tri­al despite strong evi­dence that he was incom­pe­tent to do so. The new rul­ing deter­mined that the tri­al court had failed to pro­tect a men­tal­ly ill…

Sayfullo Saipov (pic­tured) was found guilty in fed­er­al court on January 26, 2023 of killing eight peo­ple on a New York City bike path in 2017 by dri­ving a truck into a crowd of peo­ple. He will now like­ly be the first per­son to face a fed­er­al cap­i­tal penal­ty hear­ing dur­ing President Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion. On February 6, 2023, a jury in Manhattan will begin hear­ing evi­dence to deter­mine whether Saipov will be sen­tenced to death or life with­out parole. The jury must vote unan­i­mous­ly for a death…