Publications & Testimony

Military pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys are report­ed­ly dis­cussing plea deals that could take the death penal­ty off the table in the Guantánamo mil­i­tary com­mis­sion cas­es of five men accused of involve­ment in the September 11, 2001 ter­ror­ist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The nego­ti­a­tions, first report­ed by the New York Times on March 15, 2022 and sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed by defense coun­sel, would require alleged 9/​11 plan­ner Khalid…

A Pennsylvania tri­al court has grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Kevin Dowling (pic­tured), find­ing that pros­e­cu­tors with­held evi­dence that would have shown he was 40 miles away when their sole eye­wit­ness claimed to have seen him near…

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia exe­cut­ed 81 peo­ple on March 12, 2022, the largest mass exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern his­to­ry of the coun­try, elic­it­ing out­rage from United Nations and non-gov­­ern­­men­­tal human rights…

Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk is ask­ing a Tennessee tri­al court to vacate the death sen­tence imposed on Byron Black (pic­tured), agree­ing that the Nashville man, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in August 2022, is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and therefore ineligible…

The num­ber of peo­ple sen­tenced to death or fac­ing con­tin­u­ing jeop­ardy of exe­cu­tion in pend­ing cap­i­tal retri­al or resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings in U.S. states has dropped below 2,400 for the first time since 1990, a Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF)…

Bills to increase secre­cy in the con­duct of exe­cu­tions have met dif­fer­ent fates in Florida and Idaho. Florida leg­is­la­tors on March 7, 2022 gave final leg­isla­tive approval to a bill that would con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of exe­cu­tion par­tic­i­pants, includ­ing sup­pli­ers of exe­cu­tion drugs. Meanwhile, a sim­i­lar mea­sure in Idaho passed the House of Representatives but failed on a tie vote in a Senate committee…

A six-day fed­er­al tri­al on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Oklahoma​’s lethal-injec­­tion pro­to­col has con­clud­ed, with med­ical experts for the state’s death-row pris­on­ers cit­ing autop­sy and eye­wit­ness evi­dence to call the process​“tor­tur­ous” and doc­tors for the state deny­ing that pris­on­ers suf­fered as they were being…

New Hampshire State Representative Robert​“Renny” Cushing (pic­tured), a long­time vic­­tim-advo­­cate who led the Granite State’s suc­cess­ful efforts to repeal the death penal­ty, died March 7, 2022 after a mul­ti-year battle with…

Timothy Foster, whose con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 because Georgia pros­e­cu­tors dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly struck Black jurors from serv­ing in his case, has been resen­tenced to life in prison without the…

The U.S. Supreme Court has over­turned a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion that had reversed the death sen­tences imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ings that killed three peo­ple and injured more…