Publications & Testimony

Kevin Cooper (pic­tured) is a death-row pris­on­er in California who was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing four peo­ple in 1985. He has main­tained his inno­cence of the offense. On January 13, 2023, a spe­cial coun­sel appoint­ed by Governor Gavin Newsom to con­duct an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of Cooper’s case released a report dis­miss­ing his claims of inno­cence, stat­ing, ​“The evi­dence of Cooper’s guilt is extensive and…

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has appoint­ed a spe­cial coun­sel to con­duct a ​‘thor­ough review’ of the case of death-row pris­on­er Richard Glossip, who has faced nine exe­cu­tion dates despite strong evi­dence that he is inno­cent of the 1997 alleged mur­der-for-hire of an Oklahoma City motel own­er. In a news release issued January 26, 2023, two days after the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals resched­uled Glossip’s execution from…

In North Carolina and Nevada, fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims are speak­ing out against the death penal­ty, encour­ag­ing offi­cials in both states to com­mute their death…

The Alabama Supreme Court announced a change to its rules of appel­late pro­ce­dure on January 12, 2023, elim­i­nat­ing auto­mat­ic plain error review for tri­al errors in death penal­ty cas­es. This new rule removes a sig­nif­i­cant safe­guard for cap­i­tal defen­dants’ rights, which had been in place since Alabama rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1976. Without the review, cap­i­tal defen­dants who were erro­neous­ly con­vict­ed or sen­tenced could spend many more years on death row before the error is…

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) has reset the state’s exe­cu­tion sched­ule, slow­ing down the pace at which the 25-per­son exe­cu­tion spree it autho­rized in July 2022 would move…

Executions in Arizona are effec­tive­ly on hold after Governor Katie Hobbs (pic­tured) ordered a review of the state’s exe­cu­tion process fol­low­ing three botched exe­cu­tions in 2022 and Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a motion to with­draw the state’s only pend­ing request for a death war­rant. The two state offi­cials, elect­ed in the November midterm elec­tions against oppo­nents who false­ly claimed the 2020 Presidential elec­tion had been stolen,…

A Kansas cap­i­tal defen­dant is chal­leng­ing the prosecution’s deci­sion to pur­sue the death penal­ty in his case, invok­ing a height­ened stan­dard of review the Kansas con­sti­tu­tion applies to infringe­ments of fundamental…

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…