Publications & Testimony

On June 17, 2024, Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell filed a motion to set an execution date for Texas death row prisoner Robert Roberson, despite his steadfast maintenance of innocence in the death of his two-year-old daughter. Mr. Roberson has spent more than 20 years on death row for a crime that, according to the Innocence Project, “never occurred and a conviction based on the outdated and now debunked shaken baby hypothesis.” New evidence indicates that Mr. Roberson’s…

On June 19^th, or Juneteenth, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) will celebrate the opening of the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, its latest museum in Montgomery, Alabama. The 17-acre site displays contemporary artworks, first-person narratives, and historical artifacts which tell the stories about the more than 10 million Black people who were enslaved in the United States. Visitors to the park will embark on a unique narrative journey that explores the nation’s history of enslavement and its…

This is the first in a new monthly series covering academic research and articles in the field of capital punishment. In the 2020 article, “Queer and Unusual: Capital Punishment, LGBTQ+ Identity, and the Constitutional Path Forward,” Matt Kellner surveys the legal and historical landscape of anti-queerness in the death penalty throughout history. He begins by highlighting the illustrative case of Charles Rhines. Mr. Rhines, a gay man, was sentenced to death on January 26, 1993 in South Dakota…

June 16, 2024, marks 80 years since South Carolina executed 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. Historical reports indicate that on March 24, 1944, Mr. Stinney and his younger sister, Aime, were playing outside when two white girls approached them, asking where they could find a particular flower. Neither Mr. Stinney nor his sister knew where the young girls could find these flowers and they quickly moved along. That evening, when both young girls failed to return home, a search party was sent to…

In the past two weeks, the Supreme Court overturned grants of relief for two death-sentenced prisoners. In both cases, lower courts had found they received ineffective assistance of counsel at trial. The Court’s rulings are in line with its other decisions in death penalty cases restricting appeals for death-sentenced prisoners and extolling the importance of “finality” over merits-based review. Under Strickland v. Washington (1984), an attorney is ineffective when 1) his performance is…

On June 11, 2024, the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus (OLBC) held a press conference highlighting the group’s legislative priorities, which included the death penalty as a key concern. Noting “the racial cycle of injustice perpetrated by the death penalty,” State Representative Terrence Upchurch, who is also the president of the OLBC, insisted that legislative leadership move toward “dismantling this flawed system and establishing a new legacy of equality and justice in Ohio.” Rep. Upchurch and…

A June 2024 petition filed in the Prince William County, Virginia Circuit Court, accuses former Commonwealth Attorney (CA) Paul Ebert of withholding exculpatory evidence during the trial of Louis Jefferson Dukes Jr., who, along with his nephew Lonnie Weeks Jr., was convicted of murdering a state trooper in 1994 during a traffic stop. Mr. Dukes was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, while Mr. Weeks was found guilty, received the death penalty, and was executed in 2000. In the petition…

On June 4, 2024, the Missouri Supreme Court set a September 24, 2024, execution date for death-sentenced prisoner Marcellus Williams (pictured), despite serious doubts that he was not involved in the murder for which he is incarcerated. The announcement came just hours after the state Supreme Court ruled that Governor Mike Parson did not violate any rules when he dissolved a board of inquiry established in June 2023 by his predecessor, Eric Greitens, to investigate Mr. William’s claim of…

On June 1, 2024, an Idaho jury sentenced Chad Daybell to death for the 2019 murders of his first wife and his second wife’s two youngest children. Mr. Daybell pleaded not guilty to multiple first-degree murder, fraud, and conspiracy charges, but after being found guilty, he chose to waive his right to present mitigating evidence during his sentencing hearing. With this decision, Mr. Daybell declined the opportunity to provide the jury with reasons why he should not be sentenced to death.

On May 7, 2024, Harm Reduction International (HRI) released a special global overview report on the use of the death penalty for drug offenses, which is a violation of international law because drug offenses do not meet the “most serious” crimes threshold. HRI found that by the end of 2023, there were 34 countries which still retained the death penalty for drug-related offenses; Pakistan was the only country to recently eliminate the death penalty for such offenses – the first country in more…