Publications & Testimony

On September 26, 2024, a Japanese court for­mal­ly acquit­ted 88-year-old Iwao Hakamada (pic­tured), who was wrong­ful­ly sen­tenced to death in 1968 for the mur­der of his for­mer boss and fam­i­ly in Shizuoka, Japan. After 46 years on death row, and anoth­er decade of lit­i­ga­tion, Judge Kunii Tsuneishi of the Shizuoka District Court ruled that blood-stained cloth­ing used to con­vict Mr. Hakamada was fab­ri­cat­ed long after the mur­ders. ​“The court can­not accept the fact that the blood stain would remain…

Scientists and oth­er experts are unan­i­mous in their con­clu­sion that indef­i­nite or pro­longed soli­tary con­fine­ment caus­es seri­ous harm, and the United Nations says it amounts to tor­ture — yet most death-sen­tenced peo­ple in America are con­fined to these extreme con­di­tions of iso­la­tion and depri­va­tion for years. As of 2020, a dozen states rou­tine­ly kept death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in sin­gle cells for at least twen­ty-two hours a day with lit­tle-to-no human con­tact. Two recent devel­op­ments in capital…

The United States has reached a mile­stone in the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment this week. All four sched­uled exe­cu­tions in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Alabama took place, mark­ing the 1600^th exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty in the U.S., despite pub­lic opin­ion polls show­ing grow­ing con­cerns about the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of the death penal­ty and declin­ing sup­port for its…

Executions in Oklahoma and Alabama, sched­uled just hours apart on September 26, high­light issues of pro­por­tion­al sen­tenc­ing and exper­i­men­tal meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. Emmanuel Littlejohn, who was exe­cut­ed at 10:17am CT, had received a rec­om­men­da­tion of clemen­cy from Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board because of con­flict­ing evi­dence about whether he or a co-defen­dant actu­al­ly killed the vic­tim. Alan Miller, sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in the evening of September 26, sur­vived a botched lethal…

On September 23, 2024, the Missouri Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments on the joint motion by Marcellus Williams’ legal team and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney (PA) Wesley Bell to over­turn a low­er court’s deci­sion reject­ing Mr. Williams’ appeal. Later the same day, the state supreme court unan­i­mous­ly denied the motion, stat­ing that there was ​“no cred­i­ble evi­dence of actu­al inno­cence or any show­ing of a con­sti­tu­tion­al error under­min­ing con­fi­dence in the orig­i­nal judg­ment.” Also the same…

On September 19, 2024, attor­neys for Khalil Allah, for­mer­ly known as Freddie Eugene Owens, filed an emer­gency motion for a stay of exe­cu­tion after receiv­ing a signed affi­davit from his code­fen­dant in the 1997 shoot­ing death of Irene Graves that Mr. Allah ​“was not present” dur­ing the crime. Just two days ahead of Mr. Allah’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion, Steven Golden, who was also charged in Ms. Graves’ death, recant­ed his tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny and said that Mr. Allah ​“is not the per­son who shot Irene…

In hon­or of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct. 15), DPI is post­ing a week­ly fea­ture on Hispanic or Latino/​a peo­ple who have had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the death penal­ty in the U.S. The first post in this series tells the sto­ry of Leonel Herrera, the defen­dant at the cen­ter of a key Supreme Court case on…

On September 17, 2024, attor­neys for Texas death row pris­on­er Robert Roberson filed a clemen­cy peti­tion accom­pa­nied by let­ters from hun­dreds of sup­port­ers, includ­ing emi­nent sci­en­tists and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, a bipar­ti­san group of Texas leg­is­la­tors, and for­mer lead Detective Brian Wharton, urg­ing the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott to reduce Mr. Roberson’s sen­tence. Mr. Roberson is cur­rent­ly sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on October 17, 2024. He was convicted and…

“From start to fin­ish, it is so bad­ly bro­ken that we can­not know whether some­one who has been con­demned to death is actu­al­ly deserv­ing of the ulti­mate penal­ty,” wrote for­mer U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester in a September 12, 2024 op-ed for The Oklahoman. Before car­ry­ing out any new exe­cu­tions, Mr. Lester calls on the state to imple­ment new reforms to its ​“bro­ken” cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. Although the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission pro­vid­ed 45 spe­cif­ic recommendations and…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has announced its forth­com­ing annu­al report, The State of Criminal Justice 2024, exam­in­ing the state of the American criminal legal…