Publications & Testimony

In her chap­ter of the new­ly pub­lished book Neuroscience in Criminal Justice Systems: The Positive Impact of Neurojustice, Fordham Law Professor and Founding Director of the Neuroscience and Law Center Deborah Denno explores the use of neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence in crim­i­nal cas­es involv­ing brain injury, both from exter­nal caus­es (e.g., car acci­dents or gun­shot wounds) and inter­nal caus­es (e.g., demen­tia or alco­hol-induced brain dam­age). The chap­ter titled,​“The…

Tennessee​’s attempt to exe­cute Tony Carruthers on May 21, 2026, failed after exe­cu­tion team mem­bers could not estab­lish an intra­venous line after more than an hour of attempts, prompt­ing Governor Bill Lee to grant a one-year reprieve. In a writ­ten state­ment, the Tennessee Department of Corrections said med­ical per­son­nel had quick­ly estab­lished a pri­ma­ry IV line but were unable to estab­lish a back­up line as required by the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Efforts to…

The Death Penalty Information Center’s new report on race and the death penal­ty in South Carolina places the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem in his­tor­i­cal con­text, doc­u­ment­ing how racial and state sanc­tioned vio­lence con­tin­ue to influ­ence the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. Examining South Carolina’s History of Racial Violence and Capital Punishment, released May 2026, notes the state’s well-doc­u­­­men­t­ed use of state-sanc­­­tioned vio­lence that has…

Absent court action, Tony Carruthers is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Tennessee on May 21, 2026, despite untest­ed DNA evi­dence, an inno­cence claim, and seri­ous men­tal ill­ness con­cerns. On May 18, faith lead­ers, civ­il rights advo­cates and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers marched to the state capi­tol to urge Governor Bill Lee to grant Mr. Carruthers clemen­cy or stay his exe­cu­tion to allow addi­tion­al DNA test­ing, deliv­er­ing a peti­tion with over 130,000 sig­na­tures. Gov. Lee…

On May 13, 2026, the city of Austin, Texas agreed to pay $35 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion to four men — three sur­viv­ing and one deceased — who spent years under the shad­ow of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, accused of an infa­mous quadru­ple mur­der that DNA proved none of them com­mit­ted. The set­tle­ment, which must still be approved by the Austin City Council, came less than three months after a Travis County judge declared Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Forrest Welborn, and Maurice Pierce…

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) wants to fast-track death penal­ty appeals and has pro­posed a new set of reg­u­la­tions designed to facil­i­tate that process. If imple­ment­ed, the pro­posed rule would allow the Attorney General to​“cer­ti­fy” active death penal­ty states like Texas, Florida, and Alabama, result­ing in short­er fil­ing dead­lines and restrict­ed fed­er­al court review, among oth­er changes intend­ed to move appeals through the courts more quick­ly. The rule as…

On May 11, 2026, law­mak­ers in Israel passed leg­is­la­tion by a vote of 93 – 0 cre­at­ing a spe­cial tri­bunal with­in the mil­i­tary jus­tice sys­tem with the author­i­ty to impose the death penal­ty on Palestinians con­vict­ed of involve­ment in the October 7, 2023, attacks. The leg­is­la­tion pro­vides that pro­ceed­ings will be con­duct­ed in Jerusalem with a pub­licly avail­able livestream. The new tri­bunal will have the author­i­ty to charge approx­i­mate­ly 300 detained Palestinians…

DPI’s​“What to Know” series exam­ines cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment from mul­ti­ple angles, one top­ic at a time. Each install­ment pro­vides essen­tial facts and data on spe­cif­ic aspects of the death penal­ty. Please vis­it DPI’s Discrimination in Jury Selection page for a deep­er dive into the issue. Why it mat­ters: Nearly four decades after the U.S. Supreme Court barred race-based juror strikes in Batson v. Kentucky (1986), stud­ies have found that pros­e­cu­tors in North Carolina…

On May 14, 2026, Edward Busby became the 600^th per­son exe­cut­ed in Texas in the last 50 years. A three-judge pan­el of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had tem­porar­i­ly stayed his exe­cu­tion, but the U.S. Supreme Court lift­ed the stay, allow­ing the exe­cu­tion to pro­ceed. Mr. Busby is a per­son whom all experts agree has intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and he should there­fore have been legal­ly inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. Mr. Busby’s case is illustrative of…