Publications & Testimony

Bills to increase secre­cy in the con­duct of exe­cu­tions have met dif­fer­ent fates in Florida and Idaho. Florida leg­is­la­tors on March 7, 2022 gave final leg­isla­tive approval to a bill that would con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of exe­cu­tion par­tic­i­pants, includ­ing sup­pli­ers of exe­cu­tion drugs. Meanwhile, a sim­i­lar mea­sure in Idaho passed the House of Representatives but failed on a tie vote in a Senate com­mit­tee on March…

A six-day fed­er­al tri­al on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Oklahoma​’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col has con­clud­ed, with med­ical experts for the state’s death-row pris­on­ers cit­ing autop­sy and eye­wit­ness evi­dence to call the process ​“tor­tur­ous” and doc­tors for the state deny­ing that pris­on­ers suf­fered as they were being put to…

New Hampshire State Representative Robert ​“Renny” Cushing (pic­tured), a long­time vic­tim-advo­cate who led the Granite State’s suc­cess­ful efforts to repeal the death penal­ty, died March 7, 2022 after a mul­ti-year bat­tle with prostate…

Timothy Foster, whose con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 because Georgia pros­e­cu­tors dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly struck Black jurors from serv­ing in his case, has been resen­tenced to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of…

The U.S. Supreme Court has over­turned a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion that had reversed the death sen­tences imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ings that killed three peo­ple and injured more than 250…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the March 8, 2022 exe­cu­tion of death-row pris­on­er Michael Gonzales (pic­tured, sec­ond from left, with his legal team) based on evi­dence that he may be inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and that pros­e­cu­tors with­held favor­able evi­dence from the defense at the time of…

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed a Nevada dis­trict court’s grant of a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Mark Rogers, blast­ing the state for pro­vid­ing him with inex­pe­ri­enced coun­sel who lacked the knowl­edge and resources to com­pe­tent­ly defend a cap­i­tal tri­al. In a 2 – 1 deci­sion issued on February 14, 2022, the appeals pan­el upheld a September 23, 2019 rul­ing by District Court Judge Gloria M. Navarro hold­ing that the public…

Lawyers for Texas death-row pris­on­er Melissa Lucio (pic­tured) have moved to vacate her April 27, 2022 exe­cu­tion date and remove the judge and dis­trict attor­ney in her case because of con­flicts of inter­est stem­ming from their employ­ment of key mem­bers of Lucio’s orig­i­nal defense…

A new nation­al poll has found that bipar­ti­san majori­ties of Americans oppose seek­ing the death penal­ty against vul­ner­a­ble groups of defen­dants who his­tor­i­cal­ly have been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly sub­ject­ed to its…

President Joe Biden has nom­i­nat­ed fed­er­al appeals court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (pic­tured) to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice, ful­fill­ing his cam­paign pledge to select an African American woman for the Court. If con­firmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest…