Publications & Testimony

Tennessee exe­cu­tions could be on hold for years, as the state con­ducts an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into wide­spread non-com­pli­ance with its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and lit­i­gates the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of revi­sions expect­ed to be made to its exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures. The antic­i­pat­ed delay, first report­ed by the Associated Press June 13, 2022, is a like­ly by-prod­uct of a deci­sion by Governor Bill Lee to can­cel all exe­cu­tions sched­uled in the state for the remain­der of…

On the twen­ti­eth anniver­sary of its land­mark deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia pro­hibit­ing the use of the death penal­ty against indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida case that cre­ates a pro­ce­dur­al loop­hole that allows those exe­cu­tions to…

An African-American teenag­er who was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had mur­dered a white woman has been exon­er­at­ed, 91 years after he was…

Oklahoma leg­is­la­tors announced that an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion revealed strong evi­dence of Richard Glossip​’s inno­cence. Glossip, who came with­in hours of exe­cu­tion in 2015, is the sec­ond pris­on­er the Oklahoma Attorney General is seek­ing to exe­cute this fall. After the inves­ti­ga­tion report was released, Glossip’s attor­neys filed a motion in the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, ask­ing that an exe­cu­tion date not be set so that Glossip can seek…

The per­cent­age of Americans who find the death penal­ty moral­ly accept­able remains near a record low, accord­ing to a new poll released by the Gallup orga­ni­za­tion on June 9, 2022. 55% of respon­dents to Gallup’s annu­al Values and Beliefs Survey told Gallup that they con­sid­er the death penal­ty moral­ly accept­able, frac­tion­al­ly above the record low of 54% in the orga­ni­za­tion’s 2020 sur­vey. The num­ber match­es the 55% lev­el of accept­abil­i­ty report­ed in the 2021 Values and Beliefs…

At his June 8, 2022 exe­cu­tion in Arizona, Frank Atwood helped prison offi­cials find a suit­able vein for the IV line that would admin­is­ter the lethal-injec­tion drugs to end his life. Jimmy Jenkins, a reporter at the Arizona Republic who wit­nessed the exe­cu­tion, called the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing Atwood direct the state to his vein ​“sur­re­al.” He wrote in his account of the exe­cu­tion that ​“I have wit­nessed life. And I have wit­nessed death. But nothing…

The United States Supreme Court has declined to review a case in which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) flout­ed a pre­vi­ous Supreme Court rul­ing by deny­ing relief to a death-row pris­on­er a sec­ond time after the Court had returned the case with direc­tions to fur­ther con­sid­er defense counsel’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate and present a ​“tidal wave” of avail­able mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in the penal­ty phase of his capital…

Oklahoma state pros­e­cu­tors are push­ing to sched­ule 25 exe­cu­tions over approx­i­mate­ly two years, after a fed­er­al judge denied death-row pris­on­ers’ chal­lenge to the state’s con­tro­ver­sial lethal-injection…

Louisiana’s death penal­ty is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly imposed in cas­es involv­ing white female vic­tims, espe­cial­ly if the defen­dant in the case is a Black man, a new study by three lead­ing death-penal­ty researchers has con­firmed. Louisiana pros­e­cu­tors were more than five times as like­ly to seek the death penal­ty, and juries more than five times as like­ly to impose it, in cas­es involv­ing a Black male offend­er and a white female vic­tim than in crimes in which both the alleged offend­er and the victim…

Judge Stephen Friot (pic­tured) of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma has ruled that Oklahoma​’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col is con­sti­tu­tion­al. After hold­ing a week-long hear­ing on the state’s three-drug pro­to­col in February and March 2022, Judge Friot cred­it­ed the tes­ti­mo­ny of state experts over the pris­on­ers’ expert tes­ti­mo­ny on the like­li­hood that the pro­to­col would result in severe pain. While attor­neys for the 28 pris­on­ers who…