Publications & Testimony

Items: 701 — 710


Feb 21, 2022

56 Prosecutors Issue Joint Statement Calling for End of Broken’ Death Penalty

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…

Read More

Feb 18, 2022

Oklahoma County Becomes Nation’s Third Most Prolific County Executioner as State Puts Intellectually Impaired Teen Offender to Death

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 44th 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…

Read More

Feb 17, 2022

Effort to Repeal and Replace Utah’s Death Penalty Fails on 6 – 5 Vote in State House Committee

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…

Read More

Feb 15, 2022

Department of Justice Reverses Course, Rejects Use of Evidence Obtained by Torture in Guantánamo Death Penalty Case

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…

Read More

Feb 14, 2022

Autopsy Shows John Grant Suffered Pulmonary Edema and Intramuscular Hemorrhage and Aspirated Vomit During Oklahoma Execution

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…

Read More

Feb 11, 2022

Nevada Execution Personnel Back Out of Participation After Judge Inquires About Credentials

At least three Nevada exe­cu­tion per­son­nel backed out of par­tic­i­pat­ing in Zane Floyds (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…

Read More

Feb 10, 2022

Oklahoma is Paying Execution Doctor $15,000 Plus Training Fees for Each Execution

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…

Read More

Feb 09, 2022

Death Row USA Fall 2021 Report: Death-Row Population Continues Long-Term Decline

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…

Read More