Publications & Testimony

Texas is planning to execute a seriously mentally ill prisoner who has gouged out both of his eyes because of his paranoid schizophrenia. On November 7, 2022, the District Court of Grayson County, Texas set an April 5, 2023 execution date for Andre Thomas (pictured, left when arrested; center, after gouging out his right eye prior to trial; right, after gouging out and eating his left eye while on death row). Thomas has been described by his attorneys as “one of the most mentally ill prisoners…

In a 5 – 4 decision, the Supreme Court overturned the dismissal of death-row prisoner Michael Nance’s lawsuit regarding Georgia’s use of lethal injection to execute him. Georgia law specifies that prisoners will be executed only by lethal injection. Because of medical conditions that have compromised his veins, prison authorities told Nance that the execution team would have to “cut his neck” to establish an intravenous execution line. Nance filed a civil rights suit seeking to enjoin his…

Despite a court-appointed special prosecutor’s request to vacate his death sentence, Missouri executed death-row prisoner Kevin Johnson (pictured, with daughter Khorry Ramey, left, and newborn grandson) on November 29, 2022. The execution moved forward after the Missouri Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court denied stays of execution following oral argument in the Missouri high court less than 36 hours before the scheduled execution. Missouri Governor Mike Parson announced during the court’s…

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey (pictured) has halted executions and ordered a “top-to-bottom review” of the state’s execution procedures, five days after failures by corrections personnel to establish an intravenous execution line caused Alabama to call off the November 17, 2022 execution of Kenneth Smith. The botched execution of Smith marked the third time since 2018 and the second time in two months that Alabama had called off an execution in process. In addition, on July 28, 2022, executioners…

Corrections personnel who participate in executing prisoners experience emotional trauma so profound that it changes their views about capital punishment, a National Public Radio (NPR) investigation has found. For stories broadcast on All Things Considered and posted on NPR’s website, reporter Chiara Eisner (pictured) interviewed 26 current or former corrections workers and others who had been involved in executions carried out by seventeen states and the federal government. “Most of the…

Oklahoma has pushed back the clemency hearings of two men on death row, John Hanson and Richard Glossip (pictured). Glossip’s execution date was also moved back, and Hanson’s execution date will likely have to be changed. Both men were scheduled to have clemency hearings on Nov. 9, 2022, and to be executed before the end of the year, as part of Oklahoma’s planned spree of 25 executions scheduled between August 2022 and December 2024. The state’s decision to execute so many people in a short…

Kenneth Eugene Smith’s November 17 execution was halted after Alabama officials spent an hour trying to set intravenous lines for the lethal injection drugs. Earlier that evening, Smith’s execution had been stayed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, but the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the stay over the dissent of three justices. The setting of IV lines has been an issue in all 3 executions attempted by Alabama this year, including the botched execution of Joe Nathan James and…

The Tennessee Attorney General’s Office attempted to preserve a trial court ruling denying Byron Black’s intellectual disability claim, arguing before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) on November 8. Black’s attorneys argue that a new law entitles him to relief from his death sentence because of his intellectual disability, and the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office agrees. However, a trial judge denied Black’s claim because it had been previously raised when Tennessee was…

In its third execution of 2022, Arizona executed Murray Hooper for a 1980 crime that was never analyzed using modern forensic methods. In the days preceding his execution, his attorneys continued to request DNA testing and pursued new claims of prosecutorial misconduct based on evidence not revealed until Hooper’s clemency hearing. All challenges to his conviction and death sentence failed. In an investigative report published the day before Hooper’s scheduled execution, Liliana Segura of The…

Two national polls have found that support for capital punishment in the United States remains near half-century lows despite record-high perception that local crime has increased. The 2022 Crime Survey by Gallup, administered between October 3 – 20, 2022 against the backdrop of the Parkland school shooting trial, reported support for capital punishment held steady at 55%, one percentage point above the 50-year low of 54% in 2021. Gallup has measured support for capital punishment at between…