Publications & Testimony

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…

NEWS (4/​16/​21) — Tennessee: The Tennessee Supreme Court has upheld the death sen­tence imposed in the May 2016 retri­al of Michael Rimmer for the mur­der of his ex-girlfriend in…

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

On April 14, 2021, com­mit­tees in both cham­bers of the Tennessee leg­is­la­ture vot­ed to advance bills that would cre­ate a legal mech­a­nism for death-row pris­on­ers to chal­lenge their death sen­tences on the grounds that they have intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The leg­is­la­tion would close a loop­hole in Tennessee law that denies pris­on­ers whose con­vic­tions became final before the U.S. Supreme Court barred the exe­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als with intellectual…

At a time in which the Arizona Department of Corrections is fac­ing crit­i­cism for crum­bling infra­struc­ture, sub­stan­dard med­ical care, and under­staffing, the depart­ment has spent $1.5 mil­lion to pur­chase the lethal-injec­­tion drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal from an undis­closed source. The exor­bi­tant price, experts say, is a func­tion of the ques­tion­able use of the drug for non-med­i­cal pur­pos­es and the secre­tive nature of…

The Nevada State Assembly has passed a bill that would abol­ish the state’s death penal­ty and resen­tence the pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on its death row to life with­out parole. It was the first time any death-penal­­ty abo­li­tion bill had been report­ed out of com­mit­tee and con­sid­ered by either house of the…

After more than 40 years on Florida​’s death row, Sonny Boy Oats (pic­tured), one of the nation’s longest serv­ing death-row pris­on­ers, has been found inel­i­gi­ble for the…

Nearly sev­en years after the botched exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood put the death penal­ty on hold in Arizona, state offi­cials are seek­ing to resume exe­cu­tions. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced on April 6, 2021 that he is ask­ing the Arizona Supreme Court to set a brief­ing sched­ule and issue exe­cu­tion war­rants for death-row pris­on­ers Clarence Dixon and Frank Atwood. At present, no state but Texas has…

NEWS (4/​8/​21) — Nevada: The Nevada Supreme Court has grant­ed cap­i­tal defen­dant Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman​’s emer­gency motion to stay a pre­ma­ture dead­line the tri­al court had set for his lawyers to file a claim that he is inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. A tri­al court in Reno had set an April 20 dead­line for Martinez-Guzman, four months ear­li­er than the time…