Publications & Testimony

The Mississippi Supreme Court has denied additional DNA testing to death-row prisoner Willie Manning (pictured). Manning, who was sentenced to death in Oktibbeha County in 1994 and in 1996 for two separate crimes, has maintained his innocence of both crimes. He was exonerated of the 1996 conviction in 2015 after police and prosecutors unlawfully withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense. Manning sought DNA testing in the 1994 case to challenge discredited hair comparison testimony…

Executions have surged in Iran in the first half of 2022, doubling the total carried out during the same time span in 2021, human rights advocates report. Iran Human Rights (IHR), a Norwegian-based non-profit organization that promotes human rights in Iran, said that at least 251 executions were performed from January to June 2022, compared to 117 in the first half of 2021. IHR raised concerns that the executions were being used as a political tool to intimidate anti-government protesters, and…

Marcus Robinson (pictured), the first person to be granted relief under North Carolina’s trailblazing Racial Justice Act, has died. Robinson, who was sentenced to death in 1994 for a crime he committed shortly after turning 18, died June 9, 2022. He was 49 years old. An obituary by his family and a tribute by his attorneys remembered Robinson for his devotion to his family and his sense of humor, as well as his role in challenging the racial disparities in North Carolina’s death penalty.

A new law review article highlights the lack of protections for criminal defendants’ rights to make meaningful decisions despite court-recognized rights to autonomy. In “The Myth of Autonomy Rights,” a 2021 article published in the Cardozo Law Review, Professor Kathryn E. Miller (pictured) argues that there are inadequate safeguards for the autonomy rights of the average criminal defendant, especially in capital punishment cases. Professor Miller, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Law at…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has stayed the scheduled July 13, 2022 execution of Ramiro Gonzales (pictured) and directed the trial court to consider his claim that his death sentence was a product of false expert testimony concerning his alleged future dangerousness. The stay order, issued July 11, 2022, marked the eleventh time since 2019 that the TCCA has halted an execution to direct a trial court to consider new evidence or intervening caselaw that could establish the…

A new report by the human rights organization Amnesty International urges President Joe Biden to act upon his campaign pledge to work to abolish the death penalty by exercising his constitutional authority to commute the sentences of all federal death row prisoners. The report, titled The Power of Example: Whither the Biden Death Penalty Promise?, was released on June 27, 2022, just two days before the 50^th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia, which…

A teen offender whose spiritual transformation on Texas’ death row has caused a key prosecution mental health expert to recant his trial testimony, has filed a petition for clemency seeking a commutation of his death sentence ahead of his scheduled July 13, 2022 execution date. On June 21, 2022, lawyers for Ramiro Gonzales (pictured) submitted a petition for clemency to Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Gonzales’ clemency petition describes the neglect and abuse…

The Florida Supreme Court has rejected an attempt by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody to prevent DNA testing and fingerprint analysis of evidence lawyers for Henry Sireci (pictured) say could prove him innocent of a murder that sent him to death row 46 years ago. State prosecutors had sought to vacate two orders entered by the trial court on May 10, 2021 giving court approval to separate agreements between county prosecutors and counsel for Sireci and a second death-row prisoner, Tommy…

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has set execution dates for 25 of the state’s 43 death-row prisoners, scheduling nearly an execution a month from August 2022 through December 2024. If carried out, the execution schedule, unprecedented in the state’s history, would put to death 58% of the state’s death row, including multiple prisoners with severe mental illness, brain damage, and claims of innocence. The court issued its execution schedule in two orders on July 1, 2022, in response to…

Ketanji Brown Jackson has been sworn in as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first Black woman to serve as a justice in the 232-year history of the Court. In an historic ceremony at the Supreme Court shortly after the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer took effect at noon on June 30, 2022, Chief Justice John Roberts administered the Constitutional Oath to Justice Jackson (pictured). Justice Breyer, for whom Justice Jackson served as a law clerk during the Court’s…