Publications & Testimony

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er Arizona pros­e­cu­tors’ chal­lenge to fed­er­al appel­late court rul­ings allow­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion of evi­dence that was unde­vel­oped in state court due to inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion. The state seeks to over­turn rul­ings in favor of Arizona death-row pris­on­ers Barry Jones and David Ramirez. The men’s cas­es will be heard togeth­er as Shinn v. Ramirez and Jones on December…

The sis­ter of a ter­mi­nal­ly ill death-row pris­on­er who has been in hos­pice care since 2019 has asked the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole to rec­om­mend that he be grant­ed clemen­cy so he can​“die on…

Alabama death-row pris­on­er Doyle Lee Hamm (pic­tured), whose botched exe­cu­tion attempt was called off in 2018 after 2½ hours of unsuc­cess­ful attempts to set an intra­venous exe­cu­tion line, has died on death row. He was…

More than 42 years after his wrong­ful cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion in June 1979, a Missouri judge has set Kevin Strickland…

The Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, cre­at­ed by the California state leg­is­la­ture to review the state’s crim­i­nal laws, has issued a report unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ing that the state repeal its death penal­ty. The six-mem­ber committee’s 39-page Death Penalty Report, released November 17, 2021, also offers inter­me­di­ate rec­om­men­da­tions for reduc­ing the size of California’s near­ly 700-per­­son death row — the largest of any…

After years of seek­ing to exe­cute Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Pervis Payne (pic­tured) for a dou­ble-mur­der he has long insist­ed he did not com­mit, the Shelby County District Attorney​’s office has con­ced­ed that Payne is inel­i­gi­ble for the…

Public sup­port for the death penal­ty again polled at a half-cen­­tu­ry low, with oppo­si­tion remain­ing at its high­est lev­el since May 1966, accord­ing to the 2021 Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes about…

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has grant­ed clemen­cy to death-row pris­on­er Julius Jones…

Nebraska, which had no plans for hous­ing a female death-row pris­on­er, has nar­row­ly avoid­ed hav­ing to address that fail­ure, as a divid­ed three-judge pan­el on November 8, 2021 sen­tenced Bailey Boswell to life in prison without…

Mississippi car­ried out its first exe­cu­tion in more than nine years on November 17, 2021, putting to death a man with men­tal health dis­or­ders who had waived his appeals. David Neal Cox became at least the 150^th per­son since exe­cu­tions resumed in the United States in 1977 to drop their appeals and​“vol­un­teer” for exe­cu­tion. Executions of vol­un­teers account for 10% of all U.S. executions…