Publications & Testimony

On April 27, 2017, Kenneth Williams con­vulsed vio­lent­ly as he died on the gur­ney, the fourth pris­on­er put to death in an eleven-day exe­cu­tion spree in which Arkansas intend­ed to exe­cute eight men before its sup­ply of exe­cu­tion drugs expired. It has not exe­cut­ed anyone…

The South Carolina Supreme Court has halt­ed two sched­uled exe­cu­tions, includ­ing one that would have been the state’s first exe­cu­tion by fir­ing squad, amid ongo­ing legal chal­lenges by state death-row pris­on­ers to the state’s execution…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has halt­ed the sched­uled April 27, 2022 exe­cu­tion of Melissa Lucio and direct­ed that a Cameron County tri­al court con­duct a hear­ing to address evi­dence that she may be inno­cent of charges that she mur­dered her two-year-old daugh­ter, Mariah (pic­tured, being held by her…

In a coin­ci­dence that brought atten­tion to the aging of death row across the United States, the old­est death-row pris­on­ers in Tennessee and Texas faced exe­cu­tion in their respec­tive states on April 21, 2022. After the U.S. Supreme Court denied stays of exe­cu­tion for both pris­on­ers, their cas­es took different…

On April 22, 1987, the United States Supreme Court ruled in McCleskey v. Kemp that the same types of sta­tis­ti­cal data that were rou­tine­ly accept­ed as proof of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing, employ­ment, edu­ca­tion, and the denial of oth­er civ­il rights were not suf­fi­cient as proof that a death sen­tence had been unconstitutionally…

Days after his office asked to set an exe­cu­tion date for Texas death row pris­on­er John Ramirez, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez (pic­tured) asked Ramirez’s tri­al court to with­draw the…

A Missouri cap­i­tal defen­dant whose jury was the first in nine years to rec­om­mend the death penal­ty in the state is chal­leng­ing the ver­dict as based sole­ly on a nonex­is­tent aggravating…

Forensics experts and three exonerees wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der based upon junk-sci­ence diag­noses of Shaken Baby Syndrome are urg­ing the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) to over­turn the con­vic­tion of death-row pris­on­er Robert Roberson (pic­tured with his daugh­ter, Nikki). In sep­a­rate friend-of-the-court briefs filed on April 8, 2022, the two groups argue that Shaken Baby Syndrome is an invalid med­ical diag­no­sis that should nev­er be used as the basis…

An ami­cus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in sup­port of Arizona death-row pris­on­er John Montenegro Cruz presents evi­dence that Latinx defen­dants are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to juror bias regard­ing deter­mi­na­tions of future…

Kentucky has become the sec­ond state in the U.S. to bar impos­ing the death penal­ty on those diag­nosed as seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill. On April 8, 2022, Governor Andy Beshear (pic­tured) signed HB 269 into law, as Kentucky joined neigh­bor­ing Ohio in exempt­ing severe­ly men­tal­ly ill defen­dants from capital…