Publications & Testimony

In a unan­i­mous rul­ing, the California Supreme Court has lim­it­ed the reach of a con­tro­ver­sial vot­er ini­tia­tive that was intend­ed to accel­er­ate judi­cial review of death-penal­ty cas­es. In In re: Friend, decid­ed June 28, 2021, the court ruled that pro­vi­sions of Proposition 66 that strict­ly lim­it a death-row prisoner’s abil­i­ty to file suc­ces­sive chal­lenges to his or her cap­i­tal con­vic­tion or death sen­tence do not bar a cap­i­tal peti­tion­er from filing a…

As the first court hear­ing on Pervis Payne​’s claim that his death sen­tence must be vacat­ed because of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty was about to get under­way, promi­nent civ­il rights lead­ers and rel­a­tives of a civ­il rights icon added their voic­es to efforts to free the Tennessee death-row pris­on­er, who has con­sis­tent­ly asserted his…

DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham appeared on the July 16, 2021 episode of New Generation, a pod­cast pro­duced by the Sharon (Pennsylvania) Herald, in con­nec­tion with the newspaper’s Crime of Punishment editorial…

NEWS (7/​21/​21) — Ohio: The Ohio Supreme Court has vacat­ed the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for George Brinkman, find­ing that he had not been advised of crit­i­cal con­sti­tu­tion­al rights when he entered a guilty plea in his 2018 cap­i­tal tri­al and that his plea was there­fore invalid. The jus­tices vacat­ed Brinkman’s plea and returned his case to the Cuyahoga County court to con­duct a new…

In a rul­ing ren­dered along par­ti­san lines with­out ben­e­fit of oral argu­ment, the United States Supreme Court has over­turned the deci­sion of a fed­er­al appeals court that had vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on an Alabama death-row pris­on­er whose tri­al lawyers had failed to obtain expert assis­tance to present evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. By a vote of 6 – 3, with all mem­bers of the con­ser­v­a­tive bloc of jus­tices vot­ing for the pros­e­cu­tion, the Court on…

Studies have con­sis­tent­ly found that a sys­tem of crim­i­nal law in which the death penal­ty is avail­able as a pun­ish­ment is far more expen­sive than a sys­tem in which the most severe pun­ish­ment is life with­out parole or a long prison term. Now, as the num­ber of mur­der exon­er­a­tions mounts across the United States, a pre­vi­ous­ly hid­den cost is emerg­ing: the cost of lia­bil­i­ty for police and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct asso­ci­at­ed with the wrong­ful use or threat­ened use of the death…

At 3:00 a.m. Central time on July 14, 2020, after his notice of exe­cu­tion had expired, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) strapped Daniel Lewis Lee to an exe­cu­tion gur­ney in the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. With the exe­cu­tion cham­ber cur­tains closed, cor­rec­tion­al offi­cials left him there for four hours while fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors filed plead­ings in a fed­er­al appeals court to lift a stay of exe­cu­tion they had for­got­ten was still in…

Major U.S. edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers have crit­i­cized the Biden administration’s June 30, 2021 announce­ment of a tem­po­rary mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while the Department of Justice reviews Trump admin­is­tra­tion changes to U.S. exe­cu­tion prac­tices, say­ing that the pause for a lim­it­ed pol­i­cy review fails to ful­fill the President’s cam­paign pledge to work to end the federal death…

The Arizona Supreme Court has reject­ed the efforts of Arizona pros­e­cu­tors to expe­dite the exe­cu­tions of two death-row pris­on­ers and fur­ther lim­it appeals judi­cial review of legal issues in their cas­es. The Arizona Attorney General’s office had sought to short­en judi­cial review in the cas­es of death-row pris­on­ers Frank Atwood and Clarence Dixon after learn­ing that the shelf life of the drugs it intend­ed to use in the exe­cu­tions would expire…

The Arizona Attorney General’s office has asked the Arizona Supreme Court to cur­tail the time allot­ted to judi­cial review of legal issues in the cas­es of two death-row pris­on­ers pros­e­cu­tors want to exe­cute, say­ing that the drugs they intend to use in the exe­cu­tions remain potent half as long as it had previously…