Publications & Testimony

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…

An Oklahoma state rep­re­sen­ta­tive has called for an inves­ti­ga­tion into the prac­tices of the Oklahoma County District Attorney​’s office fol­low­ing addi­tion­al rev­e­la­tions that coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors delib­er­ate­ly with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and man­u­fac­tured false tes­ti­mo­ny to secure a con­vic­tion and death sen­tence against Richard Glossip in his 2004…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has denied a stay of exe­cu­tion to a Texas man fac­ing an October 5, 2022 exe­cu­tion date that was sched­uled as a result of a death-war­rant motion the local dis­trict attor­ney says was against his office policy and…