Publications & Testimony

Justin D. Levinson and Rachel G. Schaefer recent­ly pub­lished Flawed Framework, Fatal Discretion: Unraveling Implicit Bias in Capital Punishment Decisions. The arti­cle syn­the­sizes mul­ti­ple stud­ies exam­in­ing the role of implic­it bias among key deci­sion­mak­ers with­in the legal sys­tem. The authors use this research as evi­dence of both the his­tor­i­cal and ongo­ing influ­ence of implic­it bias on the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. In 2025, **75% of defendants against…

For decades, Texas per­formed exe­cu­tions at the high­est rate in the coun­try. It has car­ried out the most exe­cu­tions in the mod­ern era, with near­ly five times the num­ber as the next high­est state. However, that trend has changed in recent years, as both the num­ber of new death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions has sig­nif­i­cant­ly declined. The Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty’s (TCADP) 2025 Annual Report exam­ines the dwin­dling use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the…

Today is the ten-year anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Hurst v. Florida. Heralded as a water­shed rul­ing for cap­i­tal defen­dants, Hurst reaf­firmed the prin­ci­ple that the jury alone must find the facts nec­es­sary to con­demn a per­son to die — impli­cat­ing the death sen­tences of hun­dreds of pris­on­ers across three states. The Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury…

On December 15, 2025, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole put a hold on the exe­cu­tion of Stacey Humphreys and post­poned his clemen­cy hear­ing, orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for December 16,​“indef­i­nite­ly.” Mr. Humphreys was to be exe­cut­ed December 17 — despite claims that his tri­al was taint­ed by what three Supreme Court jus­tices described as​“extreme juror mis­con­duct.” He was the first per­son sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Georgia in 2025. Last week, Mr. Humphreys’ attorneys…

The Death Penalty Information Center released its Year End Report today, detail­ing the death penal­ty prac­tices of 2025. The Report notes diver­gent and con­tra­dic­to­ry trends. On one hand, pub­lic opin­ion polls record­ed his­tor­i­cal­ly low sup­port for the death penal­ty, and the high­est oppo­si­tion in 50 years. New research about death sen­tenc­ing is con­sis­tent with these find­ings. DPI found that when cap­i­tal juries were asked to choose between life and death, the majority,…

“We don’t need more death. We need more care.” — Anna Lee, vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­ber — In a December 9, 2025, opin­ion arti­cle in The Tennessean, Anna Lee, a mur­der-vic­­tim fam­i­ly mem­ber whose beloved great-uncle’s killer, Nick Sutton, was exe­cut­ed six years ago explains how the death penal­ty has not brought her fam­i­ly heal­ing or jus­tice. In the piece, Ms. Lee com­pas­sion­ate­ly describes the long-term emo­tion­al and finan­cial toll the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment system imposes…