Publications & Testimony

A high-pro­file Republican-led effort to abol­ish the death penal­ty in Utah has failed in com­mit­tee by a sin­gle vote. State rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee vot­ed 6 – 5 on February 14, 2022 not to advance a pro­pos­al that would repeal Utah’s death penal­ty and replace it with a new non-cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing alter­na­tive of 45 years to…

Nevada pros­e­cu­tors have failed to meet a dead­line to obtain a death war­rant to exe­cute Zane Floyd before its sup­ply of a key lethal-injec­tion drug expires, indef­i­nite­ly extend­ing the near 16-year pause between exe­cu­tions in the…

In what one ana­lyst described as ​“an impor­tant step to restore the rule of law,” the U.S. Department of Justice has pledged not to use state­ments obtained by tor­ture in its Guantánamo Military Commissions pros­e­cu­tion of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Al-Nashiri. Al-Nashiri is accused of mas­ter­mind­ing the Al Qaeda sui­cide bomb­ing of the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors in October 2000. The U.S. gov­ern­ment is seek­ing the death penal­ty against…

Autopsy results for an Oklahoma death-row pris­on­er whose exe­cu­tion state offi­cials claimed ​“was car­ried out … with­out com­pli­ca­tion” have con­firmed eye­wit­ness reports that John Grant like­ly suf­fered a tor­tur­ous death. The autop­sy, con­duct­ed by Tulsa Medical Examiner Jeremy Shelton, M.D., the morn­ing after Grant was exe­cut­ed on October 28, 2021, revealed that Grant suf­fered pul­monary ede­ma and intra­mus­cu­lar hem­or­rhag­ing, and aspi­rat­ed on his vom­it as a result…

At least three Nevada exe­cu­tion per­son­nel backed out of par­tic­i­pat­ing in Zane Floyd​’s (pic­tured, right) exe­cu­tion after a U.S. dis­trict judge asked about their edu­ca­tion and train­ing. The per­son­nel, includ­ing a doc­tor and two emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians, declined to par­tic­i­pate after U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware II asked the state to pro­vide him with their cre­den­tial infor­ma­tion. Another doc­tor was exclud­ed by the Nevada Department of Corrections…

Oklahoma is pay­ing $15,000 per exe­cu­tion, plus $1,000 for each day of train­ing, to an unnamed doc­tor to par­tic­i­pate in the process of putting state pris­on­ers to death. Under the agree­ment, the doc­tor stood to receive an esti­mat­ed $130,000 over the course of the 19-week-peri­od between October 28, 2021 and March 10, 2022 in which the state had sched­uled the exe­cu­tions of seven…

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of exe­cu­tion in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings con­tin­ued its more than two-decade decline in the third quar­ter of 2021, accord­ing to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) Fall 2021 quar­ter­ly cen­sus of death rows across the United…

Children of fam­i­ly mem­bers who have been sen­tenced to death or exe­cut­ed are among the most hid­den trau­ma vic­tims of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. To help address their unique men­tal health needs, the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed ​“to rais[ing] the stan­dard of care and improv[ing] access to ser­vices for trau­ma­tized chil­dren, their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties through­out the United States,” has released a new treat­ment resource that offers guid­ance to…

An Idaho tri­al court judge has resen­tenced Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. to life with­out parole, rul­ing that Governor Brad Little lacked legal author­i­ty to reject the state Commission of Pardons and Parole’s rec­om­men­da­tion of clemen­cy for the 65-year-old ter­mi­nal­ly ill death-row…

The state of Texas has issued a death war­rant seek­ing to exe­cute Melissa Lucio (pic­tured), a bat­tered woman who was sen­tenced to death for what may have been an acci­den­tal fall that killed her two-year-old daugh­ter. She is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed April 27,…