Publications & Testimony

At the halfway point of 2022, the United States is on pace to mark the eighth con­sec­u­tive year with few­er than 30 exe­cu­tion and few­er than 50 new death sen­tences. But even as the death penal­ty declines, a few states have attempt­ed to ramp up exe­cu­tions and the United States Supreme Court has con­tin­ued to impede death-row pris­on­ers’ access to the courts and impair judi­cial enforce­ment of defen­dants’ constitutional…

An analy­sis by the Death Penalty Information Center has dis­cov­ered ram­pant pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct in death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions. DPIC’s ongo­ing review of death sen­tences imposed and over­turned after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down exist­ing death penal­ty statutes in 1972 has iden­ti­fied more than 550 pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct rever­sals and exon­er­a­tions in cap­i­tal cas­es (click to enlarge image). That amounts to more than 5.6% of all death sen­tences imposed in the United…

On the 50^th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 29, 1972 deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia that struck down all exist­ing death penal­ty laws, the Death Penalty Information Center released its Death Penalty…

Mississippi cor­rec­tions offi­cials will have unprece­dent­ed dis­cre­tion in select­ing how the state’s death-row pris­on­ers will be exe­cut­ed under a new law that takes effect July 1,…

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the long-stand­ing prac­tice of using fed­er­al civ­il rights suits to chal­lenge state exe­cu­tion meth­ods. The Court ruled in favor of death-row pris­on­er Michael Nance, reject­ing Georgia​’s con­tention that such chal­lenges must be brought in fed­er­al habeas cor­pus pro­ceed­ings when the death-row pris­on­er pro­pos­es an alter­na­tive method not autho­rized by state…

The city of Idaho Falls, Idaho has agreed to a set­tle­ment of $11.7 mil­lion with an exoneree who spent 20 years in prison for a rape and mur­der he did not…

Tennessee exe­cu­tions could be on hold for years, as the state con­ducts an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into wide­spread non-com­pli­ance with its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and lit­i­gates the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of revi­sions expect­ed to be made to its exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures. The antic­i­pat­ed delay, first report­ed by the Associated Press June 13, 2022, is a like­ly by-prod­uct of a deci­sion by Governor Bill Lee to can­cel all exe­cu­tions sched­uled in the state for the remain­der of…

On the twen­ti­eth anniver­sary of its land­mark deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia pro­hibit­ing the use of the death penal­ty against indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida case that cre­ates a pro­ce­dur­al loop­hole that allows those exe­cu­tions to…

An African-American teenag­er who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had mur­dered a white woman has been exon­er­at­ed, 91 years after he was…

Oklahoma leg­is­la­tors announced that an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion revealed strong evi­dence of Richard Glossip​’s inno­cence. Glossip, who came with­in hours of exe­cu­tion in 2015, is the sec­ond pris­on­er the Oklahoma Attorney General is seek­ing to exe­cute this fall. After the inves­ti­ga­tion report was released, Glossip’s attor­neys filed a motion in the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, ask­ing that an exe­cu­tion date not be set so that Glossip can seek…