Publications & Testimony

The three final exe­cu­tions sched­uled in 2022 high­light­ed broad­er trends in the year’s exe­cu­tions — the exe­cu­tion of vul­ner­a­ble defen­dants, unavail­abil­i­ty of lethal-injec­tion drugs, and the sched­ul­ing of exe­cu­tions with­out regard for the abil­i­ty to actu­al­ly car­ry them out. Mississippi exe­cut­ed Thomas ​“Eddie” Loden Jr. (pic­tured) on December 14, the 18^th exe­cu­tion of the year, while two exe­cu­tions set for December 15 — John Hanson​’s in…

The death penal­ty con­tin­ued its long-term decline in the U.S. in 2022, as Oregon com­mut­ed its death row and new death sen­tences and pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty remained near 50-year lows. But per­haps more dra­mat­i­cal­ly than any­thing else, the for­ti­eth anniver­sary of lethal injec­tion could be known as ​“the Year of the Botched Execution,” the Death Penalty Information Center said in its 2022 Year End…

As part of her response to a series of botched exe­cu­tions, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has sent a let­ter to the Alabama Supreme Court ask­ing it to allow the Department of Corrections to extend the time with­in which exe­cu­tions can be car­ried out. Governor Ivey’s let­ter fol­lows her November announce­ment of a ​“top-to-bot­tom review” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures. The let­ter offered no expla­na­tion of the exe­cu­tion teams’ length delays in plac­ing IV lines, nor…

Calling the death penal­ty ​“both dys­func­tion­al and immoral,” Oregon Governor Kate Brown (pic­tured) has com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of the 17 pris­on­ers on the state’s death row. The com­mu­ta­tions, which the gov­er­nor announced on December 13, 2022, went into effect December 14 and resen­tenced the pris­on­ers to life without…

District Attorney Doug Evans, who gained noto­ri­ety for his mis­con­duct in the six tri­al of Curtis Flowers, was defeat­ed November 29, 2022 in his attempt to become a Mississippi Circuit Court judge. In a runoff elec­tion, Winona Municipal Court Judge Alan ​“Devo” Lancaster (pic­tured) defeat­ed Evans for Mississippi Fifth District Circuit Court judge. Based on unof­fi­cial elec­tion results, Lancaster received 70% of the vote while Evans received 30% of the…

In what human rights groups warn is just the start of a vio­lent cam­paign of polit­i­cal repres­sion, the Islamic Republic of Iran has begun exe­cut­ing pro­test­ers in the ongo­ing civ­il unrest fol­low­ing the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini while in cus­tody of the government’s morality…

During a December 5, 2022 press con­fer­ence, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (pic­tured) dis­cussed the state’s review of its lethal injec­tion process, reject­ing the media’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of it as a ​“mora­to­ri­um” on exe­cu­tions and urg­ing that the review be car­ried out quick­ly. Governor Kay Ivey announced a ​“top-to-bot­tom review” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col on November 21, 2022, after two exe­cu­tions in a two-month peri­od had to be called off when exe­cu­tion­er were unable to set…

In Shattered Justice: Crime Victims’ Experiences with Wrongful Convictions and Exonerations, released in August 2022, University of North Carolina-Wilmington soci­ol­o­gy and crim­i­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Kimberly Cook explores how crime vic­tims and their fam­i­ly mem­bers expe­ri­ence and process the trau­ma asso­ci­at­ed with the crime itself, the legal process, and the exon­er­a­tion of the per­son they once believed to be the…

On December 7, 1982, Texas strapped Charles Brooks to a gur­ney, insert­ed an intra­venous line into his arm, and inject­ed a lethal dose of sodi­um thiopen­tal into his veins, launch­ing the lethal-injec­tion era of American exe­cu­tions. In the pre­cise­ly forty years since, U.S. states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment have put 1377 pris­on­ers to death by some ver­sion of the method. Touted as swift and pain­less and a more humane way to die — just as exe­cu­tion pro­po­nents had said near­ly a cen­tu­ry before about…

In a year that fea­tured mas­sive cam­paign adver­tis­ing attempt­ing to por­tray legal reform­ers as respon­si­ble for increas­es in vio­lent crime, can­di­dates com­mit­ted to crim­i­nal legal reform or who promised to con­tin­ue statewide mora­to­ria on exe­cu­tions post­ed key elec­tion wins in the 2022 midterm elec­tions. Defying a pre-elec­tion nar­ra­tive fore­cast­ing a back­lash against pro­gres­sive pros­e­cu­tors and con­ven­tion­al wis­dom that fear of crime dri­ves polit­i­cal out­comes, reform pros­e­cu­tors were re-elected to…