Publications & Testimony

A deci­sion on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of South Carolina​’s new­ly adopt­ed exe­cu­tion meth­ods now rests in the hands a tri­al court judge after lawyers for death-row pris­on­ers and the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) pre­sent­ed four days of con­flict­ing expert tes­ti­mo­ny about the amount of pain suf­fered dur­ing fir­ing squad and elec­tric chair…

Oklahoma Governor J. Kevin Stitt has issued a 60-day stay of exe­cu­tion to death-row pris­on­er Richard Glossip. The order, issued August 16, 2022, delays Glossip’s September 22 exe­cu­tion to pro­vide the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals time to review a pend­ing motion by Glossip seek­ing an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on new evi­dence that he is inno­cent of the 1997 mur­der of Barry Van Treese, his boss at an Oklahoma City motel. Glossip filed that motion…

A pri­vate autop­sy of Alabama death-row pris­on­er Joe Nathan James, Jr. sug­gests that unqual­i­fied cor­rec­tions per­son­nel sub­ject­ed him to a tor­tur­ous, hours-long exe­cu­tion process in a botched exe­cu­tion that experts say was the longest since the advent of lethal injec­tion forty years…

Texas on August 17, 2022 exe­cut­ed Kosoul Chanthakoummane (pic­tured), whose con­vic­tion pros­e­cu­tors obtained with dis­cred­it­ed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. He was the sec­ond defen­dant of col­or in less than a month to be put to death over the objec­tion of the victim’s…

The American Psychological Association (APA) has over­whelm­ing­ly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for courts and leg­is­la­tors to ban the use of the death penal­ty against peo­ple charged with com­mit­ting crimes while they were under age 21. Saying that ​“the same sci­en­tif­ic and soci­etal rea­sons” that led the U.S. Supreme Court to bar cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for offend­ers younger than age 18 also ​“apply to the late ado­les­cent class,” the APA, the nation’s largest pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tion of psychologists,…

An Illinois woman who was sen­tenced to death with­out a tri­al as a result of a false con­fes­sion coerced by a dis­graced Chicago detec­tive has been exon­er­at­ed after 29…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has released its annu­al report, The State of Criminal Justice 2022, exam­in­ing the state of the American crim­i­nal legal…

Tennessee vot­ers have issued a stun­ning rebuke to con­tro­ver­sial Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich (pic­tured), oust­ing her from office after an eleven-year tenure marred by charges of racism and…

The sis­ter of death-row pris­on­er Joe Nathan James Jr. has called for an inves­ti­ga­tion into his botched exe­cu­tion fol­low­ing a state­ment by an Alabama Department of Correction’s spokesper­son that ADOC could not con­firm that James was ful­ly con­scious when he was…

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy for James Coddington (pic­tured at his clemen­cy hear­ing), the first of 25 death-row pris­on­ers sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Oklahoma between August 2022 and December…