Publications & Testimony

The cas­es of two defen­dants fac­ing immi­nent exe­cu­tion raise con­cerns about the appro­pri­ate­ness of death sen­tences for those with severe men­tal ill­ness or sharply-lim­it­ing men­tal dis­abil­i­ties. Andre Thomas is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on April 5, 2023 in Texas, despite suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness so acute that he cut out both of his eyes and ate one, claim­ing that it was nec­es­sary to pre­vent the gov­ern­ment from hear­ing his thoughts. Donald Dillbeck is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Florida on…

In a 2022 arti­cle pub­lished in the Idaho Journal of Critical Legal Studies, author Sidney Balman (pic­tured), exam­ines the rela­tion­ship between racism and geo­graph­i­cal arbi­trari­ness in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the U.S. As in oth­er areas of soci­ety, he finds that Black lives are not val­ued equal­ly with oth­ers. He cites the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) as the main legal obsta­cle to revers­ing this bias affect­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“Today,” he writes,…

On February 16, 2023, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that he will con­tin­ue his predecessor’s mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and called upon the Pennsylvania General Assembly to repeal the death…

Crosley Green was sen­tenced to death for mur­der in Florida in 1990 with an all-white non-unan­i­mous jury. He was removed from death row in 2009 and resen­tenced to life in prison. He has always main­tained his inno­cence and is now ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to over­turn his con­vic­tion because crit­i­cal evi­dence was withheld from…

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…