Publications & Testimony
Items: 811 — 820
Nov 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Read MoreOct 22, 2021
Attorneys Present Closing Arguments in Rodney Reed Innocence Hearing
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…
Read MoreOct 21, 2021
Alabama Executes Intellectually Disabled Death-Row Prisoner
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…
Read MoreOct 21, 2021
Missouri Judge Denies St. Louis City Prosecutor’s Request for Outside Prosecutors to Handle Death-Eligible Cases
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…
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