Publications & Testimony

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,…

Likely vot­ers in Clark County, Nevada over­whelm­ing­ly oppose the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment against broad cat­e­gories of vul­ner­a­ble and impaired per­sons whom coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors have been try­ing to exe­cute, a new poll released by Vegas Watch on January 27, 2022…

A Memphis judge has resentenced Pervis Payne to two con­cur­rent life sen­tences, mak­ing the for­mer Tennessee death-row pris­on­er who has long main­tained his inno­cence eli­gi­ble to apply for parole in five years. The sen­tenc­ing order, issued by Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan on January 31, 2022, fol­lows decades of lit­i­ga­tion over whether Payne, who is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, was even sub­ject to the death…

California​’s death row — the largest in the coun­try — will be dis­man­tled with­in two years, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on January 31,…

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (pic­tured), whose grow­ing doubts about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment led him to ques­tion its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty, is retir­ing after 28 years on the Court. The 83-year-old jus­tice for­mal­ly announced his retire­ment in a January 27, 2022 let­ter to President Joe Biden, say­ing that he will step down ​“when the Court ris­es for the sum­mer recess this year … assum­ing that by then my suc­ces­sor has been nom­i­nat­ed and con­firmed.” Biden said the same day that…

A divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court vot­ed 5 – 4 on January 27, 2022 to allow Alabama to exe­cute an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row pris­on­er, vacat­ing an injunc­tion issued by a fed­er­al dis­trict court on January 7 and unan­i­mous­ly upheld by a pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on January…

Oklahoma car­ried out the first exe­cu­tion of 2022 in the U.S. on January 27, inject­ing Donald Grant (pic­tured, at his clemen­cy hear­ing) with a three-drug chem­i­cal cock­tail whose con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty is the sub­ject of a pend­ing fed­er­al tri­al. Grant, whose exe­cu­tion drew inter­na­tion­al atten­tion because of his seri­ous men­tal ill­ness, was pro­nounced dead at 10:16 a.m. local…