Publications & Testimony

A non-unan­i­mous Florida jury has returned a ver­dict of life with­out parole for Nikolas Cruz, the teen offend­er con­vict­ed of killing 17 peo­ple in the February 14, 2018 shoot­ing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (pic­tured) in Parkland, Florida. The October 13, 2022 ver­dict, in which three jurors vot­ed to spare Cruz’s life, con­clud­ed a six-month sen­tenc­ing tri­al. Florida law, like that of near­ly every death-penal­ty state, requires a…

The U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ment on October 11, 2022 on whether a Texas death-row pris­on­er was time-barred from obtain­ing fed­er­al review of the state’s refusal to grant him DNA test­ing that could prove his inno­cence because he wait­ed for the state appeals process to fin­ish before fil­ing his federal…

The South Carolina Supreme Court will hear argu­ment one month soon­er on the state’s appeal of a tri­al court rul­ing that declared two of its statu­to­ri­ly meth­ods of exe­cu­tion — death by elec­tric chair and fir­ing squad —…

In its land­mark deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the use of the death penal­ty against indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty con­sti­tut­ed cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. Twenty years lat­er, how­ev­er, ​“there is not just the risk, but the cer­tain­ty” that states con­tin­ue to sen­tence intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled defen­dants to death, three legal schol­ars argue, and the fed­er­al courts are letting…

Alabama has set a November 17, 2022 exe­cu­tion date for a death-row pris­on­er whose jury vot­ed 11 – 1 to spare his…

A Pittsburg County, Oklahoma judge has denied a com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing for death-row pris­on­er Benjamin Cole (pic­tured), clear­ing the path for his exe­cu­tion on October 20,…

A study of more than 400 death-eli­gi­ble mur­der cas­es in St. Louis County, Missouri over a 27-year peri­od has found sig­nif­i­cant racial dis­par­i­ties in the county’s admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty based upon the race of the…

California Governor Gavin Newsom (pic­tured) has signed into law a bill that pro­vides death-row pris­on­ers relief from con­vic­tions or death sen­tences obtained ​“on the basis of race, eth­nic­i­ty, or national…

Black peo­ple are about 7½ times more like­ly to be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der in the U.S. than are whites, and about 80% more like­ly to be inno­cent than oth­ers con­vict­ed of mur­der, accord­ing to a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations. The already dis­pro­por­tion­ate risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tion, the Registry found, was even worse if the mur­der vic­tim in a case was…

A Texas dis­trict attor­ney has asked a Dallas judge to over­turn the cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion of Jewish death-row pris­on­er Randy Halprin (pic­tured) because of the vir­u­lent anti-Semitism of the judge who presided over his tri­al and death sen­tence. On September 27, 2022, the sec­ond day of the Jewish high holy day of Rosh Hashanah, Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson filed a legal mem­o­ran­dum with pro­posed find­ings of…