Publications & Testimony

In a 5 – 4 deci­sion, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the long-stand­ing prac­tice of using fed­er­al civ­il rights suits to chal­lenge state exe­cu­tion meth­ods. The Court ruled in favor of death-row pris­on­er Michael Nance, reject­ing Georgia​’s con­tention that such chal­lenges must be brought in fed­er­al habeas cor­pus pro­ceed­ings when the death-row pris­on­er pro­pos­es an alter­na­tive method not authorized…

The city of Idaho Falls, Idaho has agreed to a set­tle­ment of $11.7 mil­lion with an exoneree who spent 20 years in prison for a rape and murder he…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…