Publications & Testimony

The Wyoming state sen­ate has defeat­ed a bill to repeal the state’s death penal­ty. Senate File 150, spon­sored by Senator Brian Boner (R – Douglas, pic­tured dur­ing the floor debate), was report­ed out of the Senate Revenue Committee by a 4 – 1 vote on March 4, the sec­ond time a bill to end Wyoming’s death penal­ty had passed a state sen­ate com­mit­tee. However, the bill failed in the state sen­ate by a vote of 19 – 11. Nine Republicans and the chamber’s two Democrats…

A New York City judge has released three men from prison after 24 years impris­on­ment for mur­der, find­ing that a high-rank­ing pros­e­cu­tor in the Queens County District Attorney’s office delib­er­ate­ly con­cealed excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence while pur­su­ing the death penal­ty against a teenage…

More than a dozen for­mer Alabama pros­e­cu­tors, judges, and state bar pres­i­dents have filed briefs in a Birmingham court call­ing for a new tri­al for Alabama death-row pris­on­er Toforest Johnson (pic­tured, cen­ter, with fam­i­ly mem­bers). The extra­or­di­nary fil­ings join Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr in sup­port­ing efforts by lawyers from the Southern Center for Human Rights, the University of California-Berkeley Law School Death Penalty Clinic, and the…

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has void­ed the con­vic­tions of a sec­ond death-row pris­on­er who was unlaw­ful­ly tried and con­demned in the Oklahoma state courts for an offense that occurred on Native American tribal…

In the United States, the respon­si­bil­i­ty for defin­ing what is a crime and enforc­ing the crim­i­nal laws rests pri­mar­i­ly with the states. That fact, New York Times colum­nist Charles Blow (pic­tured) writes, makes action at the state lev­el “[t]he true fron­tier of crim­i­nal jus­tice equal­i­ty.” From cash bail to the death penal­ty, Blow says, “[i]f the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is to move toward racial equal­i­ty and lib­er­a­tion this change will have to start with the…

A fed­er­al appeals court has per­mit­ted a Texas dis­trict court to dis­miss a death-row prisoner’s claim that Dallas pros­e­cu­tors uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly struck Black jurors in his case with­out con­sid­er­ing evi­dence of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion that pros­e­cu­tors had with­held from the defense dur­ing state court lit­i­ga­tion on the…

Five civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions have asked a California appeals court to block the efforts of three coun­ty dis­trict attor­neys to lift stays of exe­cu­tion agreed to by the state as part of a fed­er­al-court set­tle­ment of death-row pris­on­ers’ chal­lenge to California’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col. [UPDATE: On March 9, 2021, the First District Court of Appeals dis­missed the groups’…

New poll results show that more Nevadans now sup­port alter­na­tives to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and repeal­ing the death penal­ty than favor its con­tin­ued use, mark­ing a major shift in opin­ion in the state in just the past four…