Publications & Testimony

On April 9, 2023, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called upon Attorney General Merrick Garland to withdraw the government’s pursuit of the death penalty and accept a plea deal for a mandatory life sentence in the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The editors noted that seeking a death sentence: “would, in effect, re-enact the worst case of anti-Semitic violence in U.S. history through witness testimony, media coverage and appeals that could continue for up to 20 years.” The trial…

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), with the support of the Foreign Office of the Federal Government of Germany, recently undertook a project examining the U.S. death penalty through a human rights lens. DPIC has added a series of human rights pages to its website, reframing three aspects of the death penalty – race, conditions of confinement, and executions – in light of human rights norms and treaties. The page on U.S. executions highlights various human rights issues related to…

An editorial in the Dallas Morning News urges the Texas legislature to pass a bill to ban the death penalty for people with severe mental illness, stating, it “seems like an obvious decision in a decent society.” House Bill 727, sponsored by Rep. Toni Rose (D‑Dallas), passed the Texas House on April 5, 2023, by a vote of 97 – 48 and is pending before the Texas Senate. “While the Supreme Court has banned the death penalty for juvenile offenders and people with intellectual disabilities, Texans…

On April 6, 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate Richard Glossip’s conviction and death sentence and to remand the case to the District Court for further proceedings. He cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s admonition that the prosecutor’s interest is “not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.” Regarding his motion to the court, Drummond said: “After thorough and serious deliberation, I have concluded that I…

Stephen Oliphant’s recent study on the death penalty’s effect on homicide rates published in Criminology & Public Policy found “no evidence of a deterrent effect attributable to death penalty statutes.” Oliphant first discusses deterrence theory, which “posits that punishment, or the threat of punishment, discourages individuals from committing crime,” and its role in capital punishment discourse, where proponents of the death penalty have argued that the threat of the death penalty discourages…

In their forthcoming book, “The Fear of Too Much Justice: Race, Poverty, and the Persistence of Inequality in the Criminal Courts,” renowned death-penalty attorney Stephen B. Bright and legal scholar James Kwak describe the many ways in which the U.S. legal system fails to uphold the constitutional rights of defendants, especially poor defendants and people of color. Bestselling author John Grisham said of the book, “Only Steve Bright could write such a clear and poignant indictment of…

Clarence Brandley (pictured) was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1981 in Texas for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old white girl. From the outset, he was targeted based on his race. On the day of the murder, a police officer said to the two janitors at the school who had found the deceased, “One of you two is going to hang for this.” Then, turning to Brandley, said, “Since you’re the n****r, you’re elected.” Brandley was finally exonerated and freed from Texas’ death row in…

Dr. Joseph Thornton, a psychiatrist who formerly treated death row prisoners as the medical director of a Florida maximum security prison, called for an end to the death penalty for those with severe mental illness: “We should not be executing anyone, let alone the sick and the broken,” he said. “As someone with over 40 years’ experience seeing patients with serious mental illness who are stigmatized, ostracized and blamed for their symptoms, I believe that recovery care, not ostracization…

Prominent death penalty attorney, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson (pictured with President Joe Biden), was awarded the National Humanities Medal on March 21, 2023 at the White House. The president commended Stevenson for his long-term efforts to represent the impoverished and exonerate the wrongfully convicted, in addition to founding the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, both located in Montgomery, Alabama. The…

In a forthcoming update to their groundbreaking 2018 research on the importance of mitigation in death penalty cases, researchers Russell Stetler, Maria McLaughlin, and Dana Cook (pictured) have greatly expanded the number of capital cases reviewed and drawn the conclusion that “the effective investigation and presentation of mitigating evidence can forestall a death sentence no matter how death-worthy the crime facts may appear at first glance.” Their study — titled “Mitigation Works” — focused on…