Publications & Testimony
Items: 781 — 790
Nov 05, 2021
Florida Attorney General Appeals Ruling Allowing DNA Testing for Prisoners Who Have Been on Death Row More than 40 Years
The Florida Attorney General’s office has taken steps to block DNA testing agreed to by local prosecutors and approved by the trial court for two Florida death-row prisoners who have professed their innocence for more than four…
Read MoreNov 04, 2021
Supreme Court Declines to Review Death Sentence in Case in Which Federal Prosecutors and Defense Agree Defendant’s Intellectual Disability Makes Him Ineligible for the Death Penalty
In a ruling that provoked a sharp dissent from the Court’s liberal minority, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a death-row prisoner whom prosecutors and defense lawyers agree is not eligible for the death penalty as a result of recent revisions of the definition of intellectual disability by the medical…
Read MoreNov 03, 2021
Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board Again Recommends Commuting Julius Jones’ Death Sentence
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has for a second time recommended that Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt grant clemency to death-row prisoner Julius Jones (pictured during the clemency…
Read MoreNov 02, 2021
Texas Judge Recommends Denying Death-Row Prisoner Rodney Reed’s Innocence Claim
A Texas district court judge has recommended that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) deny death-row prisoner Rodney Reed’s innocence claim and allow his conviction and death sentence to stand for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites. In a November 1, 2021 decision after ten days of testimony in July and closing statements in October, Bastrop County District Court Judge J.D. Langley issued Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Recommendations…
Read MoreNov 01, 2021
‘I Asked God to Forgive Me’: Former Alabama Governors Express Doubts About Capital Punishment
Two former Alabama governors, one a Democrat and one a Republican, have expressed serious doubts about the death penalty in the state and across the…
Read MoreOct 29, 2021
Eyewitnesses Report John Grant Experienced Repeated ‘Full-Body Convulsions’ and Vomited During Execution; Oklahoma Says Execution was Carried Out ‘Without Complication’
Oklahoma’s legacy of botched executions has continued to grow, as media witnesses to the October 28, 2021 execution of John Grant (pictured) reported that Grant suffered repeated convulsions and vomited over a nearly 15-minute period after he was administered the controversial execution drug…
Read MoreOct 28, 2021
Oklahoma Executes John Grant After Supreme Court Vacates Stay; Execution Proceeds Despite Pending Trial on Constitutionality of State’s Lethal-Injection Process
Within hours of a partisan vote in the United States Supreme Court lifting an appeals court stay, Oklahoma executed John Grant on October 28, 2021, ending a six-year hiatus brought on by a series of execution mishaps in 2014 and 2015. Eyewitnesses reported that Grant convulsed more than two dozen times and vomited as Oklahoma put him to death with a controversial three-drug execution cocktail whose constitutionality is the subject of a…
Read MoreOct 27, 2021
Three Years After Attack on Synagogue, Status of Trials in Tree of Life Killings Remains Unclear
Three years after the religiously-motivated attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, the status of the state and federal prosecutions in the case remains unsettled. As the three Jewish congregations who worship at the synagogue marked the anniversary of the October 27, 2018 attack that took the lives of eleven congregants, no trial date is in sight and the prospect of a capital trial that many in the tightly-knit community oppose continues to delay…
Read MoreOct 26, 2021
Supreme Court Moves Arguments in Death Penalty Cases to Hear Texas Abortion Cases
The U.S. Supreme Court has pushed back arguments in three death-penalty cases so it can expedite consideration of two cases involving Texas’ restrictive abortion statute. To hear argument in United States v. Texas and Whole Women’s Health v. Jackson on November 1, 2021, the court rescheduled argument in Ramirez (John) v. Collier and Shinn v. Ramirez (David) and Jones. The Court will now hear argument in…
Read MoreOct 25, 2021
U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Review Federal Appeals Court Ruling Overturning Grant of a New Trial for Texas Woman on Death Row for What May Have Been the Accidental Death of Her Child
The U.S. Supreme Court on October 18, 2021 denied review in the case of Texas death-row prisoner Melissa Elizabeth Lucio (pictured). Lucio was convicted and sentenced to death on charges that she murdered her two-year-old daughter, Mariah. Lucio has long maintained that Mariah died from an accidental…
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