Publications & Testimony

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has overturned a South Carolina death-row prisoner’s death sentence after finding that the sentencing judge in his case had ignored uncontested evidence of the defendant’s mental illness and history of severe childhood abuse and neglect. In a 2 – 1 ruling on July 26, 2022, a panel of the Fourth Circuit vacated the death sentence imposed on Quincy Allen by Richland County Circuit Court Judge G. Thomas Cooper in March 2005 for the murders…

State and federal courts have overturned three California death sentences in a span of two weeks from late June to mid-July 2022. Death-row prisoners Richard Clark, Michael Bramit, and Andrew Lancaster were all granted relief on claims related to defense counsel’s inadequate performance or jury-related issues. Clark and Bramit will receive new penalty-phase trials. Andrew Lancaster was sentenced to death in Los Angeles County in 1998. After accepting a stipulation between Lancaster’s counsel…

Posted July 27, 2022 The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) is looking for a law student for a fall 2022 paid internship that will be remote with the possibility of some in-person work. This law student will conduct legal research about the death penalty. The work will include research about prosecutorial misconduct, governmental transparency, the consideration of mitigation evidence, and racial bias in capital sentencing. With supervision by DPIC staff, the legal intern will be guided in…

Amid a violent crackdown on pro-democracy movements, Myanmar’s military junta executed four men, including a prominent activist and a former lawmaker. As family members of the political prisoner reel from the loss, human rights experts and many in the international community have decried the country’s first judicial executions in decades. The U.S. Secretary of State described the executions as “blatant attempts to extinguish democracy.” Phyo Zeya Thaw, one of the men executed, was a former…

Former Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry (pictured) and former U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester, who co-chaired the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission in 2017, have called on state officials to halt the scheduled executions of 25 death-row prisoners. In a guest column in The Oklahoman on July 24, 2022, Gov. Henry, a Democrat, and Lester, a Republican, write that “All Oklahomans, regardless of one’s stance on capital punishment, should insist on an unwavering commitment to fairness and…

Lawyers for James Coddington (pictured), the first person scheduled to be executed as part of Oklahoma’s two-year execution spree, are seeking clemency for a man they say “exemplifies the principles of redemption.” In a petition filed July 15, 2022, they ask the Oklahoma Pardons and Parole Board to commute Coddington’s death sentence to life without parole, describing Coddington’s sincere remorse and exemplary behavioral record on death row. The petition asks the Board to commute Coddington’s…

If Alabama executes Joe Nathan James on July 28, 2022 for the murder of Faith Hall, it cannot claim to be doing justice for her or her family. Hall’s two daughters, Terrlyn and Toni Hall (pictured, far left and far right) and her brother Helvetius Hall (pictured, middle), oppose James’ execution and say Faith would oppose it, too. “I don’t want it to go forward. We’re not God. The Governor is not God,” Terryln Hall told CBS 42 reporter Lee Hedgepeth. “Taking his life is not going to bring…

Data from fifty years of the modern U.S. death penalty reveal “a system that is rife with error, filled with discrimination, [and] very, very difficult to fairly administer,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham says in the July episode the Discussions with DPIC podcast. The episode, a discussion between Dunham and 2021 – 2022 DPIC Data Fellow Aimee Breaux about the launch of DPIC’s groundbreaking Death Penalty Census database, was released July 20, 2022. The Death…

As Richard Glossip faces an execution date for the fourth time, his case is a perfect example of the problems in the death-penalty system that then-Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer (pictured) identified in his 2015 landmark dissent in Glossip v. Gross. In an analysis published by Slate, Jeremy Stahl writes, “Whether or not Richard Glossip is ultimately executed for a crime he likely did not commit, his and Breyer’s names will be intertwined in death penalty history. Glossip’s case is…

A new study suggests that Idaho’s capital punishment statute fails to narrow the use of the death penalty to the “worst of the worst” crimes, raising questions about its constitutionality. In Narrowing Death Eligibility in Idaho: An Empirical and Constitutional Analysis, published in the February 2022 issue of the Idaho Law Review, Aliza Plener Cover (pictured) argues based on data from nearly 20 years of murder convictions that the Idaho legislature “has done little to meaningfully narrow a…