Publications & Testimony

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…

The Kansas Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death penal­ty against two death-row pris­on­ers’ chal­lenges that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment vio­lates the ​“inalien­able” right to life enshrined in the Kansas state…

Former Texas death-row pris­on­er Clinton Young has been released from cus­tody near­ly twen­ty years after being sen­tenced to death for a dou­ble mur­der he has con­sis­tent­ly said he did not…

Citing its ​“Christian val­ues” and the unavail­abil­i­ty of any humane means to car­ry out exe­cu­tions, Papua New Guinea has abolished capital…

Idaho prison offi­cials engaged in cloak and dag­ger prac­tices, includ­ing twice send­ing state employ­ees across state lines to make cash pur­chas­es of con­trolled sub­stances intend­ed for exe­cu­tions, active­ly con­ceal­ing the intend­ed use of the drugs, manip­u­lat­ing state records to cov­er up their activ­i­ties, and act­ing in bad faith to stonewall pub­lic records requests for exe­cu­tion-relat­ed infor­ma­tion, a joint inves­tiga­tive report by the Idaho Statesman and the Idaho…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review two cas­es con­cern­ing the scope of death-row pris­on­ers’ access to the fed­er­al courts in lit­i­gat­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of their con­vic­tions and sen­tences or the method by which states seek to execute…

Two con­ser­v­a­tive Republican leg­is­la­tors, both for­mer sup­port­ers of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion that would end death-penal­ty prosecutions in…