Publications & Testimony

Lawyers for James Coddington (pic­tured), the first per­son sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed as part of Oklahoma’s two-year exe­cu­tion spree, are seek­ing clemen­cy for a man they say ​“exem­pli­fies the prin­ci­ples of redemp­tion.” In a peti­tion filed July 15, 2022, they ask the Oklahoma Pardons and Parole Board to com­mute Coddington’s death sen­tence to life with­out parole, describ­ing Coddington’s sin­cere remorse and exem­plary behav­ioral record on death…

If Alabama exe­cutes Joe Nathan James on July 28, 2022 for the mur­der of Faith Hall, it can­not claim to be doing jus­tice for her or her fam­i­ly. Hall’s two daugh­ters, Terrlyn and Toni Hall (pic­tured, far left and far right) and her broth­er Helvetius Hall (pic­tured, mid­dle), oppose James’ exe­cu­tion and say Faith would oppose it,…

Data from fifty years of the mod­ern U.S. death penal­ty reveal ​“a sys­tem that is rife with error, filled with dis­crim­i­na­tion, [and] very, very dif­fi­cult to fair­ly admin­is­ter,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham says in the July episode the Discussions with DPIC pod­cast. The episode, a dis­cus­sion between Dunham and 2021 – 2022 DPIC Data Fellow Aimee Breaux about the launch of DPIC’s ground­break­ing Death Penalty Census data­base, was released July 20,…

As Richard Glossip faces an exe­cu­tion date for the fourth time, his case is a per­fect exam­ple of the prob­lems in the death-penal­ty sys­tem that then-Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (pic­tured) iden­ti­fied in his 2015 land­mark dis­sent in Glossip v. Gross. In an analy­sis pub­lished by Slate, Jeremy Stahl writes, ​“Whether or not Richard Glossip is ulti­mate­ly exe­cut­ed for a crime he like­ly did not com­mit, his and Breyer’s names will be…

A new study sug­gests that Idaho​’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute fails to nar­row the use of the death penal­ty to the ​“worst of the worst” crimes, rais­ing ques­tions about its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. In Narrowing Death Eligibility in Idaho: An Empirical and Constitutional Analysis, pub­lished in the February 2022 issue of the Idaho Law Review, Aliza Plener Cover (pic­tured) argues based on data from near­ly 20 years of mur­der con­vic­tions that the Idaho…

The Mississippi Supreme Court has denied addi­tion­al DNA test­ing to death-row pris­on­er Willie Manning (pic­tured). Manning, who was sen­tenced to death in Oktibbeha County in 1994 and in 1996 for two sep­a­rate crimes, has main­tained his inno­cence of both crimes. He was exon­er­at­ed of the 1996 con­vic­tion in 2015 after police and pros­e­cu­tors unlaw­ful­ly with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence from the…

Executions have surged in Iran in the first half of 2022, dou­bling the total car­ried out dur­ing the same time span in 2021, human rights advocates…

Marcus Robinson (pic­tured), the first per­son to be grant­ed relief under North Carolina​’s trail­blaz­ing Racial Justice Act, has died. Robinson, who was sen­tenced to death in 1994 for a crime he com­mit­ted short­ly after turn­ing 18, died June 9, 2022. He was 49 years…

A new law review arti­cle high­lights the lack of pro­tec­tions for crim­i­nal defen­dants’ rights to make mean­ing­ful deci­sions despite court-rec­og­nized rights to auton­o­my. In ​“The Myth of Autonomy Rights,” a 2021 arti­cle pub­lished in the Cardozo Law Review, Professor Kathryn E. Miller (pic­tured) argues that there are inad­e­quate safe­guards for the auton­o­my rights of the aver­age crim­i­nal defen­dant, espe­cial­ly in cap­i­tal punishment…

A new report by the human rights orga­ni­za­tion Amnesty International urges President Joe Biden to act upon his cam­paign pledge to work to abol­ish the death penal­ty by exer­cis­ing his con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty to com­mute the sen­tences of all fed­er­al death row…