Publications & Testimony

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…

A Nashville tri­al judge has denied a Tennessee death-row prisoner’s motion to reopen his case and halt his sched­uled April 21, 2022 exe­cu­tion in light of new DNA…

A Harrisburg, Pennsylvania tri­al court has grant­ed the appli­ca­tion of the Dauphin County District Attorney’s office to with­draw all charges against Samuel Randolph, IV, com­plet­ing his exon­er­a­tion of a dou­ble mur­der that sent him to Pennsylvania​’s death row in…

Ketanji Brown Jackson has been con­firmed as the first African-American woman to serve as a jus­tice of the United States Supreme…

The Arizona Supreme Court has set an exe­cu­tion date of May 11 for Clarence Dixon, a death-row pris­on­er who is blind and has such severe men­tal ill­ness that he was once judged legal­ly insane. Dixon is a mem­ber of the Navajo Nation, which has long opposed the death penal­ty as incon­sis­tent with its culture and…

In a move sharply crit­i­cized by rights advo­cates as a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al human rights law, Singapore has resumed exe­cu­tions for non-violent drug…

Lawyers for three men on South Carolina​’s death row have asked the state supreme court to defer set­ting exe­cu­tion dates until the courts resolve pend­ing legal chal­lenges to the state’s controversial execution…