Publications & Testimony

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) has issued reprieves fur­ther post­pon­ing four exe­cu­tions that had been sched­uled between January and May 2022. The governor’s orders, announced September 10, 2021, resched­uled the exe­cu­tions for between December 2024 and May…

The num­ber of peo­ple on death row or fac­ing pos­si­ble cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing across the United States now match­es a three-decade low, accord­ing to data com­piled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and ana­lyzed by the Death Penalty Information…

The California Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death-penal­ty statute against a con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge that had the poten­tial to over­turn the sen­tences of hun­dreds of peo­ple on California’s death row. In a unan­i­mous rul­ing issued August 26, 2021 in People v. McDaniel, the court held that a cap­i­tal jury need not unan­i­mous­ly agree to the exis­tence of an aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance before weigh­ing it in the sen­tenc­ing deci­sion so long as every juror found that the…

In an after-hours order issued on September 8, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court halt­ed Texas​’s planned exe­cu­tion of John Henry Ramirez and agreed to review his claim that the state’s refusal to allow his pas­tor to ​“lay hands” on him or pray audi­bly dur­ing the exe­cu­tion vio­lat­ed fed­er­al law and his First Amendment right to the free exer­cise of…

Efforts to end the death penal­ty in Utah edged for­ward on September 8, 2021 as two Republican leg­is­la­tors revealed plans to intro­duce leg­is­la­tion to ​“repeal and replace” the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law and the pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney in the state’s sec­ond most pop­u­lous coun­ty declared that he would no longer seek the death penal­ty in future…

Texas death-row pris­on­er John Ramirez (pic­tured) is ask­ing the United States Supreme Court to stay his September 8, 2021 exe­cu­tion, argu­ing that the state’s refusal to allow his pas­tor to pray out loud with him and lay hands on him while he is being exe­cut­ed vio­lates fed­er­al law and his First Amendment right to free exer­cise of…

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has posthu­mous­ly par­doned sev­en young Black men who were sen­tenced to death by all-white juries and exe­cut­ed in Virginia sev­en decades ago on charges of rap­ing a white woman. Following years of advo­ca­cy from fam­i­ly mem­bers and oth­er advo­cates who pushed for guber­na­to­r­i­al action, Northam announced the posthu­mous par­dons on August 31, 2021, sur­pris­ing the fam­i­ly mem­bers and advo­cates who had come to the capi­tol expect­ing to…

Despite the pen­den­cy of a tri­al on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, new­ly appoint­ed Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set exe­cu­tion dates for sev­en pris­on­ers on the state’s death row. If the court approves the exe­cu­tion dates, they would be Oklahoma’s first attempt to car­ry out exe­cu­tions in more than six years, end­ing a hia­tus brought on by a series of botched…

A group of 8^th graders from North Andover Middle School in North Andover, Massachusetts are cham­pi­oning efforts to posthu­mous­ly par­don a young woman who was sen­tenced to death for witch­craft in 1693 dur­ing the height of the Salem witchcraft…

A California tri­al court has dis­missed a law­suit filed by con­ser­v­a­tive media com­men­ta­tor John V. Lacy that had chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the March 2019 exec­u­tive order by Governor Gavin Newsom (pic­tured) declar­ing a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the…