Publications & Testimony

In an arti­cle in the Cornell Law Review, Professors Jeffrey Fagan, Garth Davies, and Raymond Paternoster show how arbi­trari­ness and race oper­ate at each stage of a cap­i­tal case, from charg­ing death-eli­gi­ble cas­es to plea nego­ti­a­tions to the selec­tion of eli­gi­ble cas­es for exe­cu­tion and ulti­mate­ly to the exe­cu­tion itself. The authors applied rig­or­ous ana­lyt­ic meth­ods to a dataset of 2,328 first-degree mur­der cas­es in Georgia from 1995 – 2004 and found that two fac­tors have significant…

A Grayson County, Texas court has with­drawn the April 5, 2023 exe­cu­tion date for Andre Thomas (pic­tured), a seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill pris­on­er whose legal team request­ed more time to demon­strate that Thomas is incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. While incar­cer­at­ed, Thomas gouged out his own eyes and claimed divine direc­tion for his crimes. More than 100 reli­gious lead­ers, along with oth­er experts, had asked Gov. Greg Abbott to halt Thomas’…

In Crossing the River Styx: The Memoir of a Death Row Chaplain, (March 2023), author Russ Ford recounts the abus­es he wit­nessed as the head chap­lain of Virginia’s death row and the strong rela­tion­ships he formed with more than a dozen con­demned pris­on­ers. Through sto­ries, he describes the core of human dig­ni­ty he expe­ri­enced among death row pris­on­ers, as well as the treach­er­ous con­di­tions these indi­vid­u­als faced dur­ing their final…

In a case that demon­strates the risks inher­ent in the death penal­ty, Maurice Hastings was found ​“fac­tu­al­ly inno­cent” in Los Angeles of the crime that could have sent him to death row and even­tu­al exe­cu­tion. On March 1, 2023, Judge William Ryan dis­missed all charges and freed Hastings, who was serv­ing a sen­tence of life without…

On February 24, 2023, Governor Katie Hobbs [pic­tured] of Arizona announced the appoint­ment of retired Judge David Duncan, a for­mer fed­er­al mag­is­trate, to lead Arizona’s Death Penalty Independent Review Committee, with all exe­cu­tions to be put on hold in the…

In a recent op-ed pub­lished in the Miami Herald, for­mer Florida war­den Ron McAndrew wrote about his expe­ri­ence with elec­tro­cu­tions and lethal injec­tions in Florida and Texas. He wit­nessed botched exe­cu­tions and observed the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects that car­ry­ing out the death penal­ty has on the correctional officers…

In a forth­com­ing arti­cle in the Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice regard­ing lim­i­ta­tions on the death penal­ty for those with dimin­ished respon­si­bil­i­ty, Richard Bonnie sum­ma­rizes the rea­sons why an exclu­sion for severe men­tal ill­ness in cap­i­tal cas­es is need­ed and exam­ines key draft­ing issues that can be expect­ed to arise in state…

Researchers based at the University of North Carolina found a strong sta­tis­ti­cal rela­tion­ship between the lev­el of racial resent­ment in a state and the num­ber of death sen­tences hand­ed down on Black peo­ple. In par­tic­u­lar, racial resent­ment was a stronger pre­dic­tor of Black death sen­tenc­ing rates than con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy, even when con­trol­ling for sev­er­al fac­tors such as homi­cide and vio­lent crime rates. Writing in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, the authors noted:…

A joint research project begun by two Texas uni­ver­si­ties illus­trates the con­fine­ment con­di­tions of death-row pris­on­ers, includ­ing areas such as vis­i­ta­tion, health care, attor­ney vis­its, recre­ation, food, and oppor­tu­ni­ties for work. The Capital Punishment & Social Rights Research Initiative has cre­at­ed an ini­tial info­graph­ic describ­ing the conditions in…

In a let­ter to Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, dat­ed January 13, 2023, nine for­mer Oklahoma Department of Corrections (ODOC) offi­cials called atten­tion to the trau­ma expe­ri­enced by prison staff from repeat­ed exe­cu­tions. The ​“relent­less pace of exe­cu­tions means the prison nev­er real­ly returns to nor­mal oper­a­tions after the emo­tion­al and logis­ti­cal upheaval of an exe­cu­tion,” explained the offi­cials. ​“Indeed, reports from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary describe near-constant mock…