Publications & Testimony

Lawyers for fed­er­al death row pris­on­er Dylann Roof argued to a fed­er­al appeals court that the avowed white supremacist’s con­vic­tions and death sen­tences in his tri­al for the 2015 mur­ders of nine Black church­go­ers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina should be over­turned because the judge pre­sid­ing over his case uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly per­mit­ted Roof to rep­re­sent him­self while mentally…

Saying that ​“the pri­vate sec­tor can no longer be a silent bystander in the soci­ety it inhab­its,” for­mer Unilever CEO Paul Polman, has called on busi­ness lead­ers around the world to take a stand against the death…

A com­mit­tee cre­at­ed by the California state leg­is­la­ture to study the state’s penal code and pro­pose improve­ments in the law has rec­om­mend­ed that California repeal its death penal­ty and expe­di­tious­ly reduce the size of its death…

In a fail­ure of trans­paren­cy one leg­isla­tive leader described as ​“unfath­omable,” the State of Texas put Quintin Jones (pic­tured) to death on May 19, 2021 with­out any media wit­ness­es present to observe the exe­cu­tion. It was the first time in the 571 exe­cu­tions con­duct­ed by Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its death penal­ty statute in 1976 that no media witnesses were…

An Idaho tri­al court has stayed the sched­uled June 2, 2021 exe­cu­tion of Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pic­tured), halt­ing state pros­e­cu­tors’ efforts to put the hos­pice-bound ter­mi­nal­ly ill pris­on­er to death before his stage‑4 can­cer can take his life and state offi­cials can con­sid­er his petition for…

In a pri­ma­ry elec­tion wide­ly con­sid­ered a ref­er­en­dum on reform pros­e­cu­tors, incum­bent Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner eas­i­ly secured a vic­to­ry against for­mer Philadelphia homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor Carlos Vega. Krasner won the May 18, 2021 elec­tion on a plat­form of con­tin­u­ing the reform he began four years ago when he was first elect­ed: eschew­ing use of the death penal­ty, ini­ti­at­ing sys­temic crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms, and end­ing mass incarceration.

A for­mer mit­i­ga­tion inves­ti­ga­tor for the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender has filed a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit against two Georgia Department of Corrections inves­ti­ga­tors and the war­den of the state’s max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison, after she was cleared of charges of pass­ing ille­gal con­tra­band dur­ing a meet­ing with a capitally charged…

A bill to abol­ish Nevada​’s death penal­ty died with­out a vote in the state sen­ate after Governor Steve Sisolak (pic­tured) declared on May 13, 2021 that ​“there is no path for­ward” to ban the prac­tice. Shortly there­after, Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, one of two Las Vegas pros­e­cu­tors to hold lead­er­ship posi­tions in the leg­is­la­ture, said that leg­is­la­tors had failed to reach a con­sen­sus on pos­si­ble amend­ments to the bill, ending…

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles has vot­ed to deny clemen­cy to Quintin Jones (pic­tured, right), dis­re­gard­ing the request by the fam­i­ly of Berthena Bryant, whom Jones killed in 1999, ask­ing Texas Governor Greg Abbott to com­mute his sen­tence to life in prison. The board­’s vote on May 18, 2021 comes one day before Jones is sched­uled to be…

In a case the late Justice Antonin Scalia tout­ed as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, a North Carolina fed­er­al jury has award­ed two intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row exonerees $75 mil­lion for the police mis­con­duct that sent them to death row. On May 14, 2021, half-broth­ers Henry McCollum (pic­tured, left) and Leon Brown (pic­tured, right) were each award­ed $31 mil­lion, $1 mil­lion for each year they spent in prison, plus an addi­tion­al $13…