Publications & Testimony

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and a coalition of more than 30 non-governmental organizations have condemned the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for a series of executions for drug crimes carried out in violation of international law. Human rights organizations reported that Saudi authorities executed 20 men in November for drug offenses — 12 of them foreign nationals — after suddenly lifting a moratorium on executions for defendants convicted of drug-related crimes. In a November 22, 2022…

Idaho has called off the scheduled December 15, 2022 execution of terminally death-row prisoner Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pictured), saying it has not been able to obtain the drugs it needs to put him to death. Instead, prosecutors said, the state would allow the death warrant to expire. Pizzuto has been in hospice care confined to a wheelchair, suffering from late-stage bladder cancer, chronic heart and coronary artery disease, coronary obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and Type 2 diabetes…

A Utah judge has granted a new trial to death-row prisoner Douglas Carter, finding that prosecutors knowingly withheld from the defense evidence that police coerced false testimony from two key witnesses, coached them to lie, provided them “thousands of dollars in financial benefits” to implicate Carter, and threatened them with deportation and loss of their son if they did not cooperate. Carter, who is black, was charged with murdering a white woman, Eva Oleson, who was the aunt of the Provo…

Alabama officials have agreed not to make a second attempt to execute Alan Miller by lethal injection after the state had to call off his September 22, 2022 execution because of the failure to establish an IV line. If the state seeks to execute Miller in the future, it will use nitrogen hypoxia, a method that has never been used for an execution. In the months since Miller’s execution attempt, Alabama also attempted and failed to execute Kenneth Smith. In response to the series of problems…

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…