Publications & Testimony

Despite a court-appoint­ed spe­cial prosecutor’s request to vacate his death sen­tence, Missouri exe­cut­ed death-row pris­on­er Kevin Johnson (pic­tured, with daugh­ter Khorry Ramey, left, and new­born grand­son) on November 29, 2022. The exe­cu­tion moved for­ward after the Missouri Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court denied stays of exe­cu­tion fol­low­ing oral argu­ment in the Missouri high court less than 36 hours before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Missouri Governor Mike…

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (pic­tured) has halt­ed exe­cu­tions and ordered a ​“top-to-bot­tom review” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures, five days after fail­ures by cor­rec­tions per­son­nel to estab­lish an intra­venous exe­cu­tion line caused Alabama to call off the November 17, 2022 exe­cu­tion of Kenneth…

Corrections per­son­nel who par­tic­i­pate in exe­cut­ing pris­on­ers expe­ri­ence emo­tion­al trau­ma so pro­found that it changes their views about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, a National Public Radio (NPR) investigation has…

Oklahoma has pushed back the clemen­cy hear­ings of two men on death row, John Hanson and Richard Glossip (pic­tured). Glossip’s exe­cu­tion date was also moved back, and Hanson’s exe­cu­tion date will like­ly have to be changed. Both men were sched­uled to have clemen­cy hear­ings on Nov. 9, 2022, and to be exe­cut­ed before the end of the year, as part of Oklahoma’s planned spree of 25 exe­cu­tions sched­uled between August 2022 and December 2024. The state’s deci­sion to exe­cute so many peo­ple in a short…

Kenneth Eugene Smith​’s November 17 exe­cu­tion was halt­ed after Alabama offi­cials spent an hour try­ing to set intra­venous lines for the lethal injec­tion drugs. Earlier that evening, Smith’s exe­cu­tion had been stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, but the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed the stay over the dis­sent of three jus­tices. The set­ting of IV lines has been an issue in all 3 exe­cu­tions attempt­ed by Alabama this year, including the…

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office attempt­ed to pre­serve a tri­al court rul­ing deny­ing Byron Black​’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim, argu­ing before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) on November 8. Black’s attor­neys argue that a new law enti­tles him to relief from his death sen­tence because of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office agrees. However, a tri­al judge denied Black’s claim because it had been…

In its third exe­cu­tion of 2022, Arizona exe­cut­ed Murray Hooper for a 1980 crime that was nev­er ana­lyzed using mod­ern foren­sic meth­ods. In the days pre­ced­ing his exe­cu­tion, his attor­neys con­tin­ued to request DNA test­ing and pur­sued new claims of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct based on evi­dence not revealed until Hooper’s clemen­cy hear­ing. All chal­lenges to his con­vic­tion and death sentence…

Two nation­al polls have found that sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States remains near half-cen­tu­ry lows despite record-high per­cep­tion that local crime has…

The four exe­cu­tions sched­uled for the week of November 17^th high­light cur­rent trends in exe­cu­tions and death sen­tenc­ing and the con­tin­ued use of the death penal­ty against vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions. The pris­on­ers sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed by four states have raised a num­ber of issues, includ­ing pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, dis­crim­i­na­tion against Black jurors, judi­cial over­ride of jury deci­sion­mak­ing, seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, and brain…