Publications & Testimony

Crosley Green was sentenced to death for murder in Florida in 1990 with an all-white non-unanimous jury. He was removed from death row in 2009 and resentenced to life in prison. He has always maintained his innocence and is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his conviction because critical evidence was withheld from his attorneys. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene, but he was identified as the killer by the sole eyewitness, the victim’s girlfriend. Two…

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Theodore B. Olson, former U.S. Solicitor General from 2001 to 2004 during President George W. Bush’s administration, called for a halt to the use of the death penalty against those implicated in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He recommended that the capital proceedings against the defendants being held in Guantánamo Bay be brought “to as rapid and just a conclusion as possible.” Olson, whose wife was killed on 9/11, stated, “If the 9/11 defendants held…

In a letter to Governor Kay Ivey (pictured) of Alabama, over 170 local faith leaders from many denominations and traditions across the state asked her to commit to a “comprehensive, independent, and external review of Alabama’s death penalty procedures” in the wake of a series of botched executions. The church representatives thanked the governor for pausing executions but urged her to ensure transparency and independence in reviewing how Alabama performs executions. The letter also raised…

Professor Craig Haney (pictured) of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Professor Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Karen Steele, a criminal defense attorney in Oregon, examined age and race data from nearly 9,000 death sentences imposed in the U.S. from 1972 to 2021. They found that the racial disparities that plague the death penalty were more pronounced in cases involving juvenile and late adolescent defendants. Building on the findings of a 2022…

On January 26, South Carolina’s Supreme Court ordered the state to turn over information about its attempts to obtain lethal injection drugs, as part of a suit challenging aspects of the state’s methods of execution. South Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2011, stating that it was too difficult to obtain lethal injection drugs. The Court’s order required the state to disclose what efforts it has made to acquire them. A lower court had ruled that the alternate methods of…

“Speaking as a business leader, a proud, lifetime Tennessean and a human being, it’s time for the state to abolish capital punishment,” wrote Mac Bartine, CEO of Knoxville-based tech company Smartria, in an op-ed for Knox News. Bartine described the findings of the 2022 independent investigation into Tennessee’s execution practices, which found that the state repeatedly failed to adhere to its own protocol. “The report proved what we have known for years – that the death penalty has no place in…

John Balentine (pictured) is a Texas death-row prisoner who was sentenced to death in 1999 for a triple murder. He had been scheduled for execution on February 8, 2023, but a temporary reprieve has been granted. His appellate attorneys have presented numerous instances of racial bias that may have affected the proceedings in his case. During Balentine’s trial, his attorneys passed handwritten notes among themselves essentially predicting a “LYNCHING” and rhetorically asking whether this might…

At the urging of Governor Ron DeSantis, bills have been introduced in the Florida House and Senate that would allow death sentences even when the jury cannot come to a unanimous verdict on the proper penalty. The proposed legislation would also permit a presiding judge to override a jury’s recommendation of life and impose a death sentence. Death sentences would be allowed if at least eight jurors agreed, creating the lowest threshold in the nation for the imposition of a death sentence. Only…

Leonard Taylor (pictured) is a Missouri death-row prisoner who was convicted in 2008 of a quadruple murder that occurred in St. Louis in December 2004. His execution is scheduled for February 7, 2023. Taylor has consistently maintained his innocence. Although Taylor’s attorneys have discovered new evidence to substantiate his claim, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell announced that he would not ask a judge to hold an evidentiary hearing in the case. Taylor claims that he was not…

The California Supreme Court granted Nvwtohiyada Idehesdi Sequoyah (tried as and referred to in court documents as Billy Ray Waldon) a new trial on January 23, 2023 after overturning his 1992 death sentence and conviction. Sequoyah was permitted to represent himself at trial despite strong evidence that he was incompetent to do so. The new ruling determined that the trial court had failed to protect a mentally ill man. Prior to his trial, Sequoyah was examined by a psychiatrist, who concluded…