Publications & Testimony

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed a Nevada dis­trict court’s grant of a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Mark Rogers, blast­ing the state for pro­vid­ing him with inex­pe­ri­enced coun­sel who lacked the knowl­edge and resources to com­pe­tent­ly defend a cap­i­tal tri­al. In a 2 – 1 deci­sion issued on February 14, 2022, the appeals pan­el upheld a September 23, 2019 rul­ing by District Court Judge Gloria M. Navarro hold­ing that the public…

Lawyers for Texas death-row pris­on­er Melissa Lucio (pic­tured) have moved to vacate her April 27, 2022 exe­cu­tion date and remove the judge and dis­trict attor­ney in her case because of con­flicts of inter­est stem­ming from their employ­ment of key mem­bers of Lucio’s orig­i­nal defense…

A new nation­al poll has found that bipar­ti­san majori­ties of Americans oppose seek­ing the death penal­ty against vul­ner­a­ble groups of defen­dants who his­tor­i­cal­ly have been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly sub­ject­ed to its…

President Joe Biden has nom­i­nat­ed fed­er­al appeals court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (pic­tured) to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice, ful­fill­ing his cam­paign pledge to select an African American woman for the Court. If con­firmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest…

In the February 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er, Amanda Bass (pic­tured, right), and Justice for Julius advo­cate Cece Jones-Davis (pic­tured, left) speak with Death Penalty Information Center Managing Director Anne Holsinger about the ques­tion­able con­vic­tion and near exe­cu­tion of for­mer Oklahoma death-row pris­on­er, Julius Jones. They dis­cuss how incom­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion and…

Despite the absence of evi­dence that the death penal­ty pro­tects police or pro­motes pub­lic safe­ty, law­mak­ers in sev­er­al states that have abol­ished cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have intro­duced bills to rein­state cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for the mur­ders of police…

Bills that would exempt indi­vid­u­als with severe men­tal ill­ness from the death penal­ty have tak­en major steps for­ward in the Kentucky and South Dakota leg­is­la­tures. The Kentucky House of Representatives vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly (76 – 19) on February 9, 2022, to advance its severe men­tal ill­ness exemp­tion, HB 269, to the state sen­ate. The South Dakota Senate fol­lowed on February 22, vot­ing 21 – 14 to pass SB 159. Both bills have Republican spon­sors and received…

Members of the Arizona Jewish com­mu­ni­ty have filed suit to bar the state from exe­cut­ing pris­on­ers in its gas cham­ber, using the same sub­stance employed by the Nazis dur­ing the Holocaust to mur­der more than one million…

Calling cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. ​“bro­ken,” 56 elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors from across the coun­try have issued a joint state­ment urg­ing sys­temic changes to end the death penal­ty nation­wide. As an ini­tial step, the pros­e­cu­tors pledged to not seek the death penal­ty ​“against peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, his­to­ries of trau­mat­ic brain injury, or oth­er intel­lec­tu­al or cog­ni­tive chal­lenges that dimin­ish their abil­i­ty to ful­ly under­stand and reg­u­late their own…

When Oklahoma exe­cut­ed Gilbert Postelle on February 17, 2022, it came with a dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion. The intel­lec­tu­al­ly impaired man who was 18 years old at the time of his offense became the 44^th per­son pros­e­cut­ed in Oklahoma County to be put to death since exe­cu­tions resumed in the U.S. in 1977. His death made the coun­ty the nation’s third-most pro­lif­ic coun­ty exe­cu­tion­er over the past half-cen­tu­ry, tied with Tarrant and Bexar coun­ties in…