Publications & Testimony

A Russian nation­al on the U.S. fed­er­al death row has filed a civ­il rights law­suit chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al government’s use of auto­mat­ic and pro­longed soli­tary con­fine­ment to house indi­vid­u­als sen­tenced to…

Alabama death-row pris­on­er Kenneth Smith spent four hours on November 17, 2022 strapped to an exe­cu­tion gur­ney while state pros­e­cu­tors attempt­ed to lift a stay of exe­cu­tion issued by a fed­er­al appeals court and his exe­cu­tion team repeat­ed­ly failed in attempts to set the intra­venous exe­cu­tion line intend­ed to kill him. He was left strapped to the gur­ney after prison offi­cials called off the botched exe­cu­tion, unaware that he was not to be put to death that…

Tennessee will not resume exe­cu­tions until it fix­es sys­temic prob­lems with the admin­is­tra­tion of its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, Governor Bill Lee has announced. ​“It’s a very impor­tant issue that has to be done cor­rect­ly,” Lee told reporters on January 5, 2023. ​“And we will take the time to fix the pro­to­col and to make cer­tain that we don’t move for­ward until everything’s in…

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the denial of relief to a Texas death-row pris­on­er whose request for new tri­al is sup­port­ed by local pros­e­cu­tors. In a two-sen­tence deci­sion, the Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari to Areli Escobar, vacat­ed the judg­ment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA), and sent the case back for recon­sid­er­a­tion. The Court’s sum­ma­ry rever­sal relied on Travis County pros­e­cu­tors’ admis­sion that Escobar’s con­vic­tion is…

Oklahoma has car­ried out the first of eleven exe­cu­tions sched­uled for 2023, admin­is­ter­ing a lethal injec­tion to death-row pris­on­er Scott Eizember on January 12. The exe­cu­tion was a con­tin­u­a­tion of a 29-month exe­cu­tion spree between August 2022 and December 2024 in which the state intends to put 25 pris­on­ers to death — 58% of the state’s death…

January 11, 2023 marks the twen­ti­eth anniver­sary of for­mer Illinois Governor George Ryan’s deci­sion to grant clemen­cy to every death row pris­on­er in Illinois, the largest blan­ket clemen­cy in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty. It was a water­shed moment in both Illinois’ crim­i­nal jus­tice his­to­ry and in the ongo­ing nation­al con­ver­sa­tion about the death…

Nearly 47 years after being con­vict­ed of a quadru­ple mur­der, Florida death-row pris­on­er Tommy Zeigler has final­ly been per­mit­ted to inde­pen­dent­ly con­duct new DNA test­ing on evi­dence he claims will prove his…

Less than two years after being exon­er­at­ed in two dif­fer­ent cas­es, Philadelphia death-row exoneree Christopher Williams (pic­tured) has been mur­dered. Williams, who spent near­ly three decades in prison, includ­ing 25 years on death row, for sep­a­rate wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tions, was fatal­ly shot after attend­ing the funer­al of Tyree Little, anoth­er for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed man, in North Philadelphia on December 16,…

Longtime civ­il and human rights lawyer, Diann Rust-Tierney, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Georgetown University’s Racial Justice Institute, joins Death Penalty Information Center exec­u­tive direc­tor Robert Dunham in the first DPIC pod­cast of 2023 for a dis­cus­sion of race, human rights, and the U.S. death…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has grant­ed an appli­ca­tion by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block a state tri­al court from review­ing a civ­il law­suit filed by three death-row pris­on­ers who chal­lenged the state’s intent to exe­cute them using lethal-injec­tion drugs they claimed were ​“unlaw­ful­ly obtained…