Publications & Testimony

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…

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…