Publications & Testimony

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…

Two Japanese death-row pris­on­ers have filed a law­suit alleg­ing that the country’s long-crit­i­­cized prac­tice of noti­fy­ing pris­on­ers of their exe­cu­tion the same day they are to be put to death is​“inhu­mane” and violates the…

South Carolina cor­rec­tion­al staff who par­tic­i­pat­ed in exe­cu­tions suf­fered life-alter­ing trau­ma that was wors­ened by an inflex­i­ble prison admin­is­tra­tion that pro­vid­ed lit­tle sup­port to address the psy­cho­log­i­cal injuries they sus­tained. Two senior staff mem­bers are now on dis­abil­i­ty, unable to work, and are suf­fer­ing from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Depression. A third mem­ber of the exe­cu­tion team end­ed his own…

A Nashville judge has for a sec­ond time approved a plea deal that would remove Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman from Tennessee​’s death row and resen­tence him to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. On November 9, 2021, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins entered an order over­turn­ing Abdur’Rahman’s 1987 con­vic­tion based on for­mer Davidson County Assistant District Attorney General John Zimmerman’s…

The United States Supreme Court heard argu­ment November 9, 2021 to review Texas death-row pris­on­er John Henry Ramirez​’s claim that the state’s refusal to allow his pas­tor to​“lay hands” on him or pray audi­bly dur­ing his exe­cu­tion vio­lates the fed­er­al Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and his First Amendment right to the free exer­cise of reli­gion. The Court appeared trou­bled by Ramirez’s religious…

Nevada pros­e­cu­tors have asked a fed­er­al judge to expe­dite a deci­sion on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s exe­cu­tion process, say­ing accel­er­at­ed review is nec­es­sary if the state is to exe­cute Zane Floyd before its sup­ply of a ques­tion­ably obtained lethal-injec­­tion drug expires on February…