Publications & Testimony

The Tennessee state leg­is­la­ture has over­whelm­ing­ly approved and sent to the gov­er­nor a bill that cre­ates a pro­ce­dure by which death-row pris­on­ers can obtain judi­cial review of claims that they are inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. On April 26, 2021, HB 1062 passed the Tennessee House by a vote of 89 – 4 and the Senate by a vote of…

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has amend­ed its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col to per­mit a con­demned pris­on­er to be accom­pa­nied in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber by a spir­i­tu­al advis­er of his or her own…

The Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission has sus­pend­ed an African-American judge who declared the state’s death penal­ty statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, accus­ing her of unpro­fes­sion­al con­duct and anti-death penalty…

As the United States under­goes an awak­en­ing on racial injus­tices in polic­ing and the judi­cial process, com­men­ta­tors and pub­lic pol­i­cy advo­cates are call­ing for a reimag­in­ing of pub­lic safe­ty and crim­i­nal pun­ish­ment that rejects the reflex­ive impo­si­tion of harsh pun­ish­ment as an instru­ment of social…

Fewer exe­cu­tions were car­ried out across the world in 2020 than at any time in a decade and new death sen­tences fell by more than a third, accord­ing to a new report by Amnesty International. It was the third con­sec­u­tive year in which con­firmed exe­cu­tions reached a 10-year low, and the sixth year in a row in which con­firmed exe­cu­tions declined, Amnesty…

A con­tro­ver­sial psy­chi­a­trist who repeat­ed­ly tes­ti­fied that severe­ly men­tal­ly ill death-row pris­on­ers were fak­ing their symp­toms and were com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed has been barred from med­ical prac­tice in…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has over­turned the death sen­tence of the nation’s longest-serv­ing death-row pris­on­er, 45 years after he was first sent to death…

Executions for drug offens­es plum­met­ed world­wide dur­ing 2020, accord­ing to a new report by the glob­al drug-pol­i­cy mon­i­tor Harm Reduction International…