Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

A Bastrop, Texas tri­al court heard clos­ing argu­ments October 18, 2021 on whether Texas death-row pris­on­er Rodney Reed should be grant­ed a new tri­al in the April 1996 mur­der of Stacey Stites. The argu­ment con­clud­ed the adver­sar­i­al por­tion of an extra­or­di­nary evi­den­tiary hear­ing ordered by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) to review Reed’s claims that pros­e­cu­tors secured his con­vic­tions for rape and mur­der by sup­press­ing excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and presenting false…

Alabama has exe­cut­ed an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row pris­on­er who was sen­tenced to death by his tri­al judge despite a non-unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion by his jury. Willie B. Smith III was exe­cut­ed by three-drug lethal injec­tion on October 21, 2021 after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his appeal of a low­er fed­er­al court rul­ing deny­ing his claim that the state’s choice to exe­cute him by lethal injec­tion vio­lat­ed his rights under the…

A St. Louis Circuit Court judge has denied St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner​’s (pic­tured) July 2021 request for spe­cial pros­e­cu­tors to han­dle three death-eli­gi­ble homi­cide cas­es in her juris­dic­tion. On October 15, 2021, Circuit Judge Elizabeth Hogan wrote that the con­flicts cit­ed by Gardner’s office in its request for a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor were not ​“dis­qual­i­fy­ing” and there­fore that ​“the Court has no author­i­ty to appoint a special…

Alleging that Shelby County Assistant District Attorney General Stephen Jones may have been rep­re­sent­ing the pros­e­cu­tion in his case while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly serv­ing as a cap­i­tal case staff attor­ney assist­ing the county’s judges, Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Pervis Payne (pic­tured) has moved to dis­qual­i­fy the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office from fur­ther par­tic­i­pa­tion in his case. Payne is await­ing a scheduled…

An intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled Alabama death-row pris­on­er has appealed a fed­er­al dis­trict court rul­ing that clears the way for his exe­cu­tion on October 21,…