Publications & Testimony

Larry Hudson has been added to DPIC’s Descriptions of Innocence page as a newly-discovered death row exoneration. Mr. Hudson was tried and sentenced to death for a robbery-homicide in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1967, when he was 19 years old. He was exonerated in 1993, when he was 46 years old. An eyewitness, Frank Wilson, testified at Mr. Hudson’s trial that he had picked Mr. Hudson out of a line-up prior to trial, but a police officer who had been present testified that Mr. Wilson had failed…

On August 25, 2023, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the state Supreme Court to set a date for Kenneth Smith to be executed using nitrogen hypoxia, a method that has never been used in any state. The decision to use this method comes after Alabama botched several executions. Since 2018, when Alabama initially authorized the use of nitrogen hypoxia in capital punishment, the state has been working to establish a protocol for executions using this method. Alabama initially authorized…

In July 2023, legal scholars, a civil rights group, and various organizations which advocate for victims of domestic and gender-based violence filed amicus briefs in support of two death-sentenced female prisoners, Brenda Andrew and Brittany Holberg. Both amicus briefs allege that gender bias in their cases denied them fair trials. On July 10, 2023, the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, joined by three professors with expertise in the death penalty, criminal law, and women and…

A recent law review article criticizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of its ‘shadow docket’ in capital cases, particularly in recent years. The Capital Shadow Docket and the Death of Judicial Restraint, by Professor Jenny-Brooke Condon, explains that the Court “invokes judicial restraint to justify its refusal to second-guess the cruelty of challenged execution methods or when Justices cite federalism-based rationales for refusing to delay state enforcement of a death sentences … And yet on the…

At an August 15, 2023 rally organized by The Promise for Justice Initiative, a group opposed to the death penalty and which advocates for greater change in the criminal legal system, family members of victims and prisoners and death row exoneree Shareef Cousin called on the Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole to grant the 56 clemency applications that have been submitted by prisoners on death row. “Part of clemency is really about giving the opportunity to the survivors of these crimes to…

On August 18, 2023, a military judge in Guantanamo Bay overseeing the pretrial capital prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Saudi national accused of organizing the October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, excluded Mr. al-Nishiri’s confessions as the product of torture. “Exclusion of such evidence is not without societal costs,” said the judge, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., in a 50-page decision. “However, permitting the admission of evidence obtained by or derived from torture by the same…

On August 16, 2023, Michael Cummins, who was facing the death penalty for the 2019 killings of eight individuals in rural Tennessee, pled guilty to all eight counts of first-degree murder in exchange for life in prison without parole. Sumner County District Attorney Ray Whitley told the press that he had reversed his decision to seek a death sentence and agreed to the plea based on new evidence regarding Mr. Cummins’ mental health. That evidence included Mr. Cummins’ brain scans, which showed…

Two of the five members of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, which considers the clemency petitions of the state’s death row prisoners, have resigned. Board chairman Richard Smothermon and member Cathy Stocker both announced that the board’s August 2023 meeting would be their last. Governor Kevin Stitt has appointed former District Attorney Kevin Buchanan to replace Ms. Stocker, while Mr. Smothermon’s replacement will be selected by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Tom Bates, the director of…

On August 8, 2023, death-sentenced prisoner Aubrey Trail petitioned the state to set his execution date. Currently, there are 10 others on death row in Nebraska, but the state does not possess the necessary lethal injection drugs for any executions. Nebraska has not executed anyone in more than five years. The last person executed was Carey Dean Moore in 2018 via lethal injection. Mr. Trail confessed to the 2017 killing of Sydney Loofe and was sentenced to death by a three-judge panel in 2021.

Idaho U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has ruled in favor of death row prisoner Gerald Pizzuto, indefinitely pausing his March 2023 execution date, and granting him a hearing in his claim that the state of Idaho violates his Constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment by repeatedly scheduling execution dates while knowing the state does not have the means to carry it out. “As Pizzuto describes it,” Judge Winmill wrote, “defendants’ repeated rescheduling of his execution is like…