Publications & Testimony

NEWS (5/​14/​21) — North Carolina: A Rowan County tri­al judge has resen­tenced William Barnes to con­sec­u­tive life sen­tences for the mur­ders of an elder­ly North Carolina cou­ple in 1992, after the coun­ty dis­trict attorney’s office declined to pur­sue a new cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. The dis­trict attorney’s deci­sion, made with the agree­ment of the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly, fol­lowed a fed­er­al appeals court rul­ing that had…

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office has asked the United States Supreme Court to stay an Oklahoma appeals court rul­ing that void­ed the con­vic­tion of an Oklahoma death-row pris­on­er for a triple mur­der com­mit­ted on trib­al lands against mem­bers of the Chickasaw Nation while state pros­e­cu­tors seek review of that rul­ing by the…

One day after Governor Bill Lee signed a bill cur­ing a defect in Tennessee law that had pre­vent­ed death-row pris­on­ers from chal­leng­ing their death sen­tences on the basis of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, Pervis Payne’s (pic­tured) lawyers asked a Memphis tri­al court to vacate his…

The leg­is­la­ture doesn’t want cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the exec­u­tive branch can’t obtain exe­cu­tion drugs, and Nebraska pros­e­cu­tors have moved for­ward this year with the pan­dem­ic-delayed cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing tri­als of two defen­dants sep­a­rate­ly con­vict­ed of a mur­der out of a voyeuris­tic true-crime nov­el. The state, writes Associated Press reporter Grant Schulte in a May 9, 2021 analy­sis, is​“still wed­ded to the idea of exe­cut­ing pris­on­ers, just not…

Posthumous foren­sic test­ing of evi­dence in the case of Ledell Lee (pic­tured), who was exe­cut­ed in Arkansas in 2017, has found DNA from an uniden­ti­fied male on a bloody club used to kill Debra Reese 29 years ago and on a blood-soaked shirt that was wrapped around the weapon. The DNA results, released by the Innocence Project and the ACLU on April 30, 2021, raise addi­tion­al trou­bling questions about…

A fed­er­al appeals court has reversed the death sen­tence of an African-American Georgia death-row pris­on­er who was rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by a defense lawyer noto­ri­ous for his his­to­ry of sub­stan­dard rep­re­sen­ta­tion and racial bias in death-penalty…

NEWS (5/​6/​21) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court issued two deci­sions deny­ing relief in…

In an over­whelm­ing bipar­ti­san vote, the Texas House of Representatives has passed a bill that ends death-penal­­ty lia­bil­i­ty under the state’s con­tro­ver­sial​“law of par­ties” for felony accom­plices who nei­ther kill nor intend­ed that a killing take place and were minor par­tic­i­pants in the con­duct that led to the death of the vic­tim. Currently, Texas law makes any par­tic­i­pant in a felony crim­i­nal­ly liable for the acts of every­one else involved in the…

One day shy of the tenth anniver­sary of the state’s last exe­cu­tion, the South Carolina leg­is­la­ture, frus­trat­ed by the state’s inabil­i­ty to obtain exe­cu­tion drugs, approved a bill that would autho­rize putting pris­on­ers to death in the elec­tric chair or…

A new poll of reg­is­tered Texas vot­ers has found that sup­port for the death penal­ty, while still strong, has fall­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past decade. A University of Texas/​Texas Tribune inter­net sur­vey of 1,200 reg­is­tered vot­ers con­duct­ed from April 16 – 22, 2021 found that 63% say they favor keep­ing the death penal­ty for peo­ple con­vict­ed of vio­lent crimes. That num­ber is down from 75% in February 2015 and 78% when the poll…