Entries tagged with “Prosecutorial misconduct”
Issues
Mar 01, 2024
Death-Sentenced Philadelphia Prisoner Daniel Gwynn Exonerated After Nearly 30 Years
On February 27, 2024, Common Pleas Court Judge Barbara A. McDermott approved a motion from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to dismiss first-degree murder, arson, and aggravated assault charges against 54-year-old death-sentenced prisoner Daniel Gwynn. Mr. Gwynn is the 197th person exonerated after being sentenced to death since 1973, according to DPIC’s Innocence Database. “Today is mostly for us a day of tremendous relief and sadness, a guy like him, an innocent soul spent that…
Issues
Jan 18, 2024
Discussions with DPIC Podcast: Life After Death Row with Anthony Graves
In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with former death-sentenced prisoner Anthony Graves. Exonerated from Texas’ death row in 2010, Mr. Graves has since become an advocate for criminal justice reform, creating the Anthony Graves Foundation, working with the ACLU and Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and testifying before the U.S. Senate on prison conditions. Mr. Graves has also authored an autobiography titled Infinite Hope: How…
Issues
Jun 29, 2023
Prosecutorial Misconduct and Brady Claims Closely Examined in Forthcoming Article
A forthcoming law review article tackles big questions about prosecutorial misconduct. The Brady Database focuses on the principle stated in the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland: that the government’s withholding of evidence that is material to the determination of either guilt or punishment of a criminal defendant violates the defendant’s constitutional right to due process. While the article focuses on Brady claims in criminal law generally, these claims are often raised by…
Issues
Feb 15, 2023
Thirty-three Years After His Conviction, Former Death Row Prisoner Asks Supreme Court for Justice
Crosley Green was sentenced to death for murder in Florida in 1990 with an all-white non-unanimous jury. He was removed from death row in 2009 and resentenced to life in prison. He has always maintained his innocence and is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his conviction because critical evidence was withheld from his attorneys. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene, but he was identified as the killer by the sole eyewitness, the victim’s girlfriend. Two…
Issues
Jan 30, 2023
Attorneys for Kevin Cooper Respond to Special Counsel Report
Kevin Cooper (pictured) is a death-row prisoner in California who was convicted of murdering four people in 1985. He has maintained his innocence of the offense. On January 13, 2023, a special counsel appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to conduct an independent investigation of Cooper’s case released a report dismissing his claims of innocence, stating, “The evidence of Cooper’s guilt is extensive and conclusive.” In response, Cooper’s attorneys made the following statement: “The special…
Issues
Dec 01, 2022
Utah Court Grants New Trial to Death-Row Prisoner Convicted in 1985 by False Testimony Coerced by Police
A Utah judge has granted a new trial to death-row prisoner Douglas Carter, finding that prosecutors knowingly withheld from the defense evidence that police coerced false testimony from two key witnesses, coached them to lie, provided them “thousands of dollars in financial benefits” to implicate Carter, and threatened them with deportation and loss of their son if they did not cooperate. Carter, who is black, was charged with murdering a white woman, Eva Oleson, who was the aunt of the Provo…
Issues
Sep 28, 2022
Oklahoma Lawmaker Calls for Investigation of Prosecutor for Deliberately Withholding Evidence of Innocence in Richard Glossip Retrial
An Oklahoma state representative has called for an investigation into the practices of the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s office following additional revelations that county prosecutors deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence and manufactured false testimony to secure a conviction and death sentence against Richard Glossip in his 2004 retrial. At a news conference on September 22, 2022, the fourth date Oklahoma had set to execute Glossip, State Representative Justin Humphrey (R – Lane…
Issues
Aug 26, 2022
DPIC Analysis: At Least a Dozen Exonerations in 2021 Involved the Wrongful Threat or Pursuit of the Death Penalty
A Death Penalty Information Center review of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has found that the pursuit or threatened use of the death penalty by police or prosecutors in nine different states led to the wrongful murder convictions of at least twelve innocent people who were exonerated in 2021. DPIC’s analysis of the National Registry’s 2021 Annual Report on Exonerations found that prosecutors in California, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi, and New York wrongfully sought the…
Issues
Victims' Families
,Aug 22, 2022
Fort Worth D.A. Urges Reversal of Death Sentence, Saying Trial Prosecutor ‘Blatantly Lied’ to Jury that Victim’s Family Wanted Death Penalty
The Tarrant County District Attorney’s office has asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) to vacate Paul Storey’s death sentence, saying that his trial prosecutor “blatantly lied” to his jury that the victim’s family wanted the death penalty and subsequently committed perjury in state post-conviction proceedings to cover up that lie. In an extraordinary filing on August 17, 2022 shortly after being granted permission to reenter the case to “set the record straight with respect to the…
Issues
Jun 30, 2022
DPIC Analysis Finds Prosecutorial Misconduct Implicated in More than 550 Death Penalty Reversals or Exonerations
An analysis by the Death Penalty Information Center has discovered rampant prosecutorial misconduct in death penalty prosecutions. DPIC’s ongoing review of death sentences imposed and overturned after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down existing death penalty statutes in 1972 has identified more than 550 prosecutorial misconduct reversals and exonerations in capital cases (click to enlarge image). That amounts to more than 5.6% of all death sentences imposed in the United States in the past…
Issues
Jun 21, 2022
Pennsylvania Teen Exonerated 91 Years After Sham Trial and Execution on Racially Motivated Charges that He Had Murdered a White Woman
An African-American teenager who was convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had murdered a white woman has been exonerated, 91 years after he was executed. On June 13, 2022, Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge Kevin Kelly granted a motion filed jointly by lawyers for Alexander McClay Williams and the Delaware County District Attorney’s office to posthumously overturn Williams’ conviction and death sentence. (Williams is pictured with then-District…
Issues
New Voices
,May 18, 2022
Alabama Appeals Court Rules Trial Court Did Not Abuse Discretion in Denying New Trial for Death-Row Prisoner Toforest Johnson
Ignoring entreaties from judges, prosecutors, and state bar presidents, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has denied a new trial to death-row prisoner Toforest Johnson. On May 6, 2022, the state appeals court ruled that Johnson (pictured, center, in a family photo) was not entitled to relief on his claim that prosecutors in his 1998 trial in Birmingham withheld evidence of a payment to a key witness in exchange for her testimony. Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder…
Issues
May 16, 2022
Federal Appeals Court Rules that Louisiana Prosecutor and Police Officer Who Fabricated Evidence are Not Immune from Civil Rights Lawsuit by Former Death-Row Prisoner
A prosecutor and police officer who fabricated evidence to wrongfully convict a former Louisiana death-row prisoner are not entitled to immunity in a lawsuit alleging they “knowingly and deliberately fabricated” that testimony, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled. Michael Wearry, a Louisiana prisoner whose conviction and death sentence were overturned by the U.S Supreme Court in 2016 because prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence, had filed suit in 2018 against Livingston…
Issues
Apr 12, 2022
Samuel Randolph Exonerated from Pennsylvania Death Row as Prosecutors Withdraw Charges at Retrial
A Harrisburg, Pennsylvania trial court has granted the application of the Dauphin County District Attorney’s office to withdraw all charges against Samuel Randolph, IV, completing his exoneration of a double murder that sent him to Pennsylvania’s death row in 2003. On April 6, 2022, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to review the county prosecutors’ appeal of a federal court ruling granting Randolph a new trial, District Attorney Fran Chardo filed a motion to enter an order of…
Issues
Mar 24, 2022
Ohio Appeals Court Grants Tyrone Noling Access to Police and Prosecutor Files Alleged to Contain Long-Hidden Exculpatory Evidence
An Ohio appeals court has ordered that death-row prisoner Tyrone Noling (pictured) be granted access to prosecutors’ and law enforcement files that may contain exculpatory evidence that has been hidden for decades from the defense. On March 14, 2022, the Ohio Court of Appeals reversed a July 2021 ruling by the Portage County Court of Common Pleas that had denied Noling’s motion to review the file of the Portage County Prosecutor in his case and the investigative files of the Portage County…
Issues
Mar 17, 2022
Pennsylvania Court Finds State Trooper Fabricated Evidence, Awards Death-Row Prisoner Kevin Dowling New Trial
A Pennsylvania trial court has granted a new trial to death-row prisoner Kevin Dowling (pictured), finding that prosecutors withheld evidence that would have shown he was 40 miles away when their sole eyewitness claimed to have seen him near the murder scene. In a ruling issued February 22, 2022, Lebanon County Senior Judge Robert J. Eby, sitting by designation in Dowling’s York County case, also found that prosecutors failed to correct the testimony of a state trooper who fabricated a…
Issues
Mar 08, 2022
Nearly Six Years After Supreme Court Granted Him a New Trial, Timothy Foster Resentenced to Life
Timothy Foster, whose conviction and death sentence were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 because Georgia prosecutors discriminatorily struck Black jurors from serving in his case, has been resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On March 4, 2022, Foster (pictured) pleaded guilty in a Rome, Georgia courtroom and accepted the life sentence after prosecutors agreed to drop the death penalty in his case. The plea deal ends a 35-year legal odyssey that began in…
Issues
Executions Overview
,Mar 04, 2022
Texas Court Stays Michael Gonzales Execution to Permit Review of Claims of Intellectual Disability, Prosecutorial Misconduct
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the March 8, 2022 execution of death-row prisoner Michael Gonzales (pictured, second from left, with his legal team) based on evidence that he may be ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability and that prosecutors withheld favorable evidence from the defense at the time of trial. The appeals court’s order, issued March 3, 2022, halted what would have been the first execution in Texas in 2022. Gonzales filed a 169-page…
Executions
Executions Overview
,Feb 18, 2022
Oklahoma County Becomes Nation’s Third Most Prolific County Executioner as State Puts Intellectually Impaired Teen Offender to Death
When Oklahoma executed Gilbert Postelle on February 17, 2022, it came with a dubious distinction. The intellectually impaired man who was 18 years old at the time of his offense became the 44th person prosecuted in Oklahoma County to be put to death since executions resumed in the U.S. in 1977. His death made the county the nation’s third-most prolific county executioner over the past half-century, tied with Tarrant and Bexar counties in Texas. (Click to enlarge graphic.) Postelle was the…
Issues
Jan 25, 2022
Clinton Young Free Pending Retrial After 20 Years on Texas Death Row
Former Texas death-row prisoner Clinton Young has been released from custody nearly twenty years after being sentenced to death for a double murder he has consistently said he did not commit. Young, pictured with Clinton Young Foundation Legal Director Merel Pontier after his release, walked out of the Midland County Detention Center January 21, 2022, after the foundation posted bond to secure his freedom while prosecutors from neighboring Dawson County decide whether to retry Young on the…
Jan 24, 2022
Capital Case Roundup — Florida Supreme Court Grants New Trials in Two Death Penalty Cases
On January 13, 2022, the Florida Supreme Court granted new trials to two Florida death-row prisoners. The court overturned Joe Simpson’s 2007 conviction and death sentence because of prosecutorial misconduct. It also overturned Peter Avsenew’s 2018 conviction and death sentence because of the improper presentation of remotely-recorded testimony. Simpson was sentenced to death in 2007 for the murders of Archie Howard Crook, Sr. and his pregnant girlfriend, Kimberli Kimbler in 1999. In a 5 – 1…
Issues
Dec 28, 2021
Georgia Man Exonerated 23 Years After Wrongful Capital Murder Conviction
Devonia Inman, sentenced to life in a capital murder trial in which Georgia prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence, has been exonerated 23 years after his wrongful conviction. On December 20, 2021, one month after Judge Kristina Cook Graham granted Inman a new trial based on evidence that the prosecution had unconstitutionally suppressed multiple police records and physical evidence that another man had committed the killing, the Alapaha Judicial Circuit District Attorney Chase L. Studstill…
Issues
Dec 20, 2021
Rodney Reed Files New Petition Alleging Prosecutors Illegally Withheld Evidence for 23 Years
Prosecutors hid favorable evidence from Texas death-row prisoner Rodney Reed during his 1998 trial for the murder of Stacey Stites and then argued for his execution claiming that the evidence did not exist, Reed’s lawyers allege in a new court pleading filed in his case. Reed has consistently maintained his innocence in Stites’ murder and has argued that her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, a disgraced former police officer and a sex offender, is the killer. Reed says that he and Stites were…
Issues
Dec 15, 2021
Citing Vindictive Prosecution, El Paso Judge Dismisses Capital Murder Case
A Texas trial judge has dismissed all charges against an El Paso murder defendant, saying that the decision to seek the death penalty against him was a product of “prosecutorial vindictiveness.” In an order issued December 14, 2021, District Court Judge Alyssa Perez (pictured) freed Ivan Gabaldon, dismissing his case with prejudice. Gabaldon’s lawyers had argued that county prosecutors had sought the death penalty against him in retaliation for exercising his constitutional right to a speedy…
Issues
Nov 11, 2021
Citing Race Discrimination, Nashville Judge Reverses Conviction of Tennessee Death-Row Prisoner Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, Approves Plea Deal for Life Sentence
A Nashville judge has for a second time approved a plea deal that would remove Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman from Tennessee’s death row and resentence him to life without possibility of parole. On November 9, 2021, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins entered an order overturning Abdur’Rahman’s 1987 conviction based on former Davidson County Assistant District Attorney General John Zimmerman’s unconstitutional use of discretionary strikes to remove African Americans from the jury. The…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Nov 03, 2021
Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board Again Recommends Commuting Julius Jones’ Death Sentence
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has for a second time recommended that Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt grant clemency to death-row prisoner Julius Jones (pictured during the clemency hearing). Following a hearing on November 1, 2021, the board, citing doubts about Jones’ guilt, voted 3 – 1 to ask Stitt to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. Jones, who is Black, is scheduled to be executed November 18 on charges that he murdered Paul Howell, a white…
Issues
Religion
,Upcoming Executions
,Oct 12, 2021
Texas Federal Court Stays Execution of Stephen Barbee on Religious Freedom Issue, Defense Seeks Review of False Forensic Testimony
A federal court in Texas has stayed the October 12, 2021 execution of Texas death-row prisoner Stephen Barbee on his claims that the state’s refusal to allow his spiritual advisor to administer last rites, touch him, or pray out loud in the execution chamber violates his constitutional and federal statutory rights to free exercise of religion. Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas issued the stay on October 7, 2021, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s…
Issues
Sep 28, 2021
Death-Row Exonerees in Ohio, Oklahoma Receive Million Dollar Payments for Their Wrongful Convictions
Two men exonerated from death row, one in Ohio and one in Oklahoma, have received million ‑dollar payouts for their wrongful convictions and death sentences. Both were tried and convicted in counties with long histories of prosecutorial misconduct and high rates of wrongful capital convictions. The compensation comes more than a decade after each was released from incarceration. In early September 2021, former death-row prisoner Robert Miller reached a $2 million settlement with Oklahoma City…
Issues
Sep 23, 2021
Texas Appeals Court Vacates Conviction of Death-Row Prisoner Clinton Young, Whose Prosecutor was Secretly on the Payroll of the Judge Who Tried Him
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has vacated the conviction of death-row prisoner Clinton Young, whose prosecutor was also on the payroll of the judge who presided over the trial and decided his trial court appeals. In an unsigned opinion and order with no dissents, the TCCA on September 22, 2021 granted Young’s petition for a new trial. “Judicial and prosecutorial misconduct — in the form of an undisclosed employment relationship between the trial judge and the prosecutor appearing…
Issues
Sep 17, 2021
OUTLIER COUNTIES: Ohio Death-Row Prisoner Challenges Sentence Based on Hamilton County Race Discrimination Study
An African-American man sentenced to death in Hamilton County, Ohio in 1999 for the murder of a white man is seeking to overturn his conviction and death sentence based on evidence from a recently published study that he was more than five times more likely to be sentenced to death because of his race and the race of the victim in his case. On September 3, 2021, citing statistical evidence from a study that found that the races of the defendant and the victim have significantly influenced the…
Issues
Sep 13, 2021
Death-Row Exoneree Curtis Flowers Sues Mississippi Prosecutor Who Prosecuted Him Six Times
Former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured), who was exonerated in 2020, is suing the officials whose misconduct led to his arrest and repeated wrongful conviction. Flowers was tried six times and spent 23 years wrongfully incarcerated for a quadruple murder in a white-owned furniture store in Winona, Mississippi. In a complaint filed September 3, 2021 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, Flowers alleges that his trial prosecutor, an…
Issues
Aug 30, 2021
Jurors who Voted to Convict Toforest Johnson Now Support New Trial
Three members of the jury who voted to convict and sentence Toforest Johnson (pictured, center) to death in his capital trial in Birmingham in 1998 are now urging Alabama’s courts to grant him a new trial. Having learned of significant prosecutorial misconduct during Johnson’s trial for the murder of a sheriff’s deputy, including the revelation that a key witness lied to collect reward money, Jay Crane, Matthew Young, and Monique Hicks all say that Johnson’s conviction should be overturned. “I…
Issues
Aug 16, 2021
NBC’s ‘Dateline’ Investigates the Wrongful Capital Conviction of Death-Row Exoneree Walter Ogrod
NBC’s true crime series, Dateline, featured an episode on August 13, 2021 on the wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration of former Philadelphia death-row prisoner Walter Ogrod (pictured). The episode, entitled “The Investigation,” is part of an NBC News series called “Justice for All” that reports on wrongful convictions and the U.S. criminal legal system. For the report, NBC News anchor Lester Holt interviewed Ogrod, the mother and stepfather of 4‑year-old victim Barbara Jean Horn…
Issues
Aug 06, 2021
DPIC Analysis: 13 Exonerated in 2020 From Convictions Obtained by Wrongful Threat or Pursuit of the Death Penalty
A Death Penalty Information Center analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has found that law enforcement use or threat of capital prosecution against suspects or witnesses contributed to the wrongful convictions of 10% of the people exonerated in the United States and more than one-fifth of all murder exonerations in 2020. Reviewing data from the National Registry of Exonerations’ 2020 Annual Report, DPIC found that the death penalty was pursued or defendants or witnesses…
Issues
Jul 29, 2021
DNA Exonerates Georgia Man Who Had Waived His Appeals to Avoid Wrongful Execution
When Dennis Perry stood with his defense team on the steps of the Brunswick, Georgia courthouse (pictured) after a trial judge dismissed all charges against him, he was a free man, exonerated of the racially motivated murders of a deacon and his wife in a local Black church in 1985. His case was one of at least four death-penalty prosecutions involving misconduct by Brunswick Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney John B. Johnson III. And it was the latest of more than 30 exonerations…
Issues
Jul 27, 2021
New Podcast: Capital Defense Lawyer Marc Bookman Discusses His New Book and the Systemic Defects that Have Sent the Death Penalty into ‘A Descending Spiral’
In the July 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham talks with Marc Bookman, the co-founder and Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation (ACCR), about his critically acclaimed new book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays. In their discussion, Bookman and Dunham explore a wide range of systemic death-penalty problems addressed in the book, which was released by The New Press in May 2021. The topics…
Issues
Jul 07, 2021
NEW BOOK — Marc Bookman’s A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays
“The more people know about how the system of capital punishment really works, the less support they will have for that policy,” says Marc Bookman, the author of A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays. Bookman’s critically acclaimed collection of essays — described by Publishers Weekly as “a cogent and harrowing primer on what’s wrong with capital punishment” — channels his decades of capital litigation experience into 12 stories that exemplify the systemic failings of the…
Issues
Jun 28, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of June 21, 2021
NEWS (6/25/21) — Alabama: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has affirmed an Alabama federal district court decision dismissing James Barber’s habeas corpus challenge to his conviction and death sentence. In an unsigned, unpublished opinion, the appeals court denied Barber’s claim that his lawyers provided ineffective representation in the penalty phase of his capital trial by failing to investigate and present mitigating evidence to the jury. NEWS (6/23 – 24/21) — Florida…
Issues
Jun 23, 2021
As More Evidence of Innocence Emerges, 34 Oklahoma Legislators Call on Governor for Investigation of Death-Row Prisoner Richard Glossip’s Conviction
Following additional revelations that Richard Glossip (pictured) may be innocent of the murder that sent him to Oklahoma’s death row in 1998, a bipartisan group of 34 state legislators are calling upon Governor Kevin Stitt and the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to conduct an independent investigation into Glossip’s case. 28 Republican and six Democratic legislators — including many who are supporters of the death penalty — sent a letter to Stitt and the Board on May 17, 2021 advocating for…
Issues
Jun 14, 2021
‘The Phantom’: A Documentary About the Wrongful Execution of Carlos DeLuna Premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival
A new documentary about the case of Carlos DeLuna, a likely innocent man who was executed in Texas in 1989, premieres June 14, 2021 at the Tribeca Film Festival. The Phantom, based on an investigation by Columbia Law School Professor James Liebman and his students that culminated in the book, The Wrong Carlos, tells the story of the flawed investigation into the 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, a single mother who was killed during a robbery of the convenience store where she worked. DeLuna not…
Issues
Jun 07, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of May 31, 2021
NEWS (6/4/21) — Arizona: The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 decision in Lynch v. Arizona, which struck down the state’s unconstitutional refusal to instruct capital-sentencing juries that defendants who are sentenced to life are not eligible for parole, does not provide grounds for a death-row prisoner to seek new state-court review of that issue. The court dismissed an attempt by John Cruz to raise the issue, saying that his prior lawyers had failed to…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,May 21, 2021
Court Halts Execution of Terminally Ill Idaho Death-Row Prisoner
An Idaho trial court has stayed the scheduled June 2, 2021 execution of Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pictured), halting state prosecutors’ efforts to put the hospice-bound terminally ill prisoner to death before his stage‑4 cancer can take his life and state officials can consider his petition for clemency. On April 9, Pizzuto’s lawyers filed a clemency petition, seeking to commute his sentence to life without possibility parole based upon his terminal illness, brain damage from head injuries…
Issues
May 04, 2021
Trial Court Recommends New Trial for Death-Row Prisoner Whose Prosecutor Secretly Also Served as the Court’s Law Clerk
Finding “brazen misconduct” by a prosecutor who withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense and then secretly served as the trial judge’s law clerk in the case, a Midland County, Texas judge has recommended that death-row prisoner Clinton Young (pictured) be granted a new trial. In a 30-page factfinding order issued on April 26, 2021, Senior Judge Sid Harle excoriated former assistant district attorney Ralph Petty and the Midland County District Attorney’s office for “shocking prosecutorial…
Issues
Apr 14, 2021
Nevada State Assembly Passes Bill to Repeal Death Penalty and Resentence Death-Row Prisoners to Life
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 Nevada legislature. AB 395 passed the Assembly on April 13, 2021 by a vote of 26 – 16, with all Democrats supporting the measure and all Republicans opposing it. The bill advances to the state senate…
Issues
Apr 09, 2021
Report: 83% of Death Sentences Have Not Resulted in Executions Under Ohio’s ‘Lethargic’ Death Penalty
Just one out of every six death sentences imposed in Ohio in the past forty years has resulted in an execution, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s 2020 Ohio Capital Crimes Annual Report. The report, released by Attorney General Dave Yost on April 1, 2021, criticized the state’s death-penalty system as “increasingly time-consuming, costly, and lethargic.” According to the report, 336 people have been sentenced to death since the state’s current death-penalty law was instituted in 1981. Of…
Issues
Apr 08, 2021
Former Florida Death-Row Prisoner with Innocence Claim Released Pending Outcome of Federal Appeal
More than thirty years after a Florida judge sentenced him to death following an 8 – 4 sentencing recommendation by an all-white jury, Crosley Green (pictured) has been freed. Citing Green’s age and health risks related to continued incarceration during the pandemic, Judge Roy B. Dalton of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on April 7, 2021, ordered Green’s immediate release while a federal appeals court considers prosecutors’ appeal of the district court’s July 2018…
Issues
Mar 18, 2021
New York Judge Finds Queens Prosecutor Lied to Convict Three Men Wrongfully Imprisoned in 1990s Death-Penalty Case
A New York City judge has released three men from prison after 24 years imprisonment for murder, finding that a high-ranking prosecutor in the Queens County District Attorney’s office deliberately concealed exculpatory evidence while pursuing the death penalty against a teenage defendant. On March 5, 2021, Justice Joseph Zayas, the Administrative Judge of the Queens County Supreme Court, granted a joint request by the Queens County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit and lawyers for…
Issues
Mar 12, 2021
Texas Federal Appeals Court Refuses to Consider Suppressed Evidence of Dallas Prosecutors’ Race-Based Jury Selection Practices, Upholds Conviction and Death Sentence
A federal appeals court has permitted a Texas district court to dismiss a death-row prisoner’s claim that Dallas prosecutors unconstitutionally struck Black jurors in his case without considering evidence of racial discrimination that prosecutors had withheld from the defense during state court litigation on the issue. The February 8, 2021 ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholds the conviction and death sentence imposed on James Broadnax for his participation in the…
Issues
Dec 22, 2020
Texas Supreme Court Orders Compensation for Death-Row Exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown
The Texas Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that the state’s comptroller had no authority to deny death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown’s application for compensation after a trial court had declared him “actually innocent.” The court ruled on December 18, 2020 that Texas law entitled Brown to compensation for the twelve years he was imprisoned after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of a store clerk and a Houston police officer. Brown spent nine years on…
Issues
Dec 17, 2020
Former Pennsylvania Death-Row Prisoner Roderick Johnson is Freed After ‘Egregious’ Prosecutorial Misconduct Bars Retrial
A former Pennsylvania death-row prisoner has been freed, one month after the trial court barred his retrial because of “egregious” prosecutorial misconduct by the county district attorney. On December 1, 2020, Berks County Court of Common Pleas Judge Eleni Dimitriou Geishauser formally dismissed all charges against Roderick Johnson in the 1996 double-murder of cousins Damon and Gregory Banks in Reading, Pennsylvania and issued an order discharging him from custody. Johnson was freed after the…
Issues
Oct 23, 2020
DPIC Analysis: Use or Threat of Death Penalty Implicated in 19 Exoneration Cases in 2019
Prosecutors or police used or threatened to use the death penalty as a coercive tool that led to or extended the wrongful convictions of at least nineteen people who were exonerated in 2019, a Death Penalty Information Center analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations has revealed. Nearly 95% of those cases also involved some other form of major misconduct, the DPIC analysis found. DPIC’s special report, Use or Threat of Death Penalty Implicated in 19 Exoneration Cases in…
Issues
Oct 20, 2020
‘Keep Your Head Up and Don’t Give Up’ — Exoneree Curtis Flowers Gives an Illuminating First Interview to the In the Dark Podcast
In his first interview since his September 24, 2020 exoneration, former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured) spoke with In the Dark podcast host and lead reporter Madeleine Baran about his 24-year journey to freedom after having being framed, tried six times, sent to death row and finally freed for a murder everyone involved knew full well he had never committed. In an interview that aired October 14, 2020, Flowers said he survived the ordeal with the unbending support of…
Issues
Oct 08, 2020
Report Finds Rampant Government Misconduct in Death-Row Exonerations, Especially in Cases with Black Defendants
A new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has found that police or prosecutorial misconduct is rampant in death-row exoneration cases and occurs even more frequently when the wrongfully death-sentenced exoneree is Black. The report, Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent, released September 15, 2020, examined the factors contributing to 2,400 exonerations since 1989. It found that misconduct was present in more than half of all exonerations and nearly three-quarters of…
Issues
Sep 17, 2020
Robert DuBoise and Tina Jimerson Exonerated Decades After Wrongful Capital Prosecutions in Florida, Arkansas
A Florida man and an Arkansas woman, convicted of murder in separate cases involving junk science and prosecutorial misconduct, have been exonerated, decades after being wrongfully capitally prosecuted. Hillsborough Circuit Judge Christopher Nash dismissed all charges against former Florida death-row prisoner Robert DuBoise on September 14, 2020, granting a motion filed by the office of State Attorney Andrew Warren. The motion was the culmination of an investigation by Warren’s Conviction…
Issues
Sep 10, 2020
Eight Years After Exoneration, Court Declares Joe D’Ambrosio ‘Wrongfully Imprisoned’
Eight years after his exoneration from death row, an Ohio trial court judge has declared that Joe D’Ambrosio (pictured) was “wrongfully imprisoned.” The August 31, 2020 ruling by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Russo moves D’Ambrosio one step closer to receiving compensation for the more than two decades he spent on death row as a result of prosecutorial misconduct. D’Ambrosio first filed suit seeking a declaration of wrongful imprisonment in 2012, after the federal courts had…
Issues
Sep 09, 2020
Texas Death-Row Prisoner Seeks New Trial Citing Hidden Evidence that Prosecutor was Paid to Work for Trial Judge in Same Case
Texas death-row prisoner Clinton Young (pictured), who came within days of execution in October 2017 while prosecutors hid evidence of his innocence, has filed a claim for a new trial based upon previously undisclosed evidence that an assistant district attorney who prosecuted him was simultaneously employed by the trial judge to provide legal advice in his case. In an Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus Seeking Relief from a Judgment of Death, filed August 13, 2020 in Midland County…
Issues
Sep 08, 2020
Curtis Flowers Exonerated in Mississippi After Attorney General Drops All Charges
After six trials marred by prosecutorial misconduct and racial prejudice, drawing a scathing rebuke from the U.S. Supreme Court, former Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Flowers (pictured with the ankle monitor that had kept him under house arrest) has been exonerated. On September 4, 2020, nearly 23 years after he was first questionably convicted of a quadruple murder in Winona, Mississippi, the Mississippi Attorney General’s office dropped all charges against Flowers and a Montgomery…
Issues
Sep 01, 2020
Mississippi Supreme Court Grants New Trial to Eddie Howard, Sentenced to Death by Junk Bite-Mark Evidence
The Mississippi Supreme Court has granted a new trial to death-row prisoner Eddie Lee Howard, Jr. (pictured), finding that the combination of scientifically invalid bite-mark evidence used to convict him and new DNA evidence entitled him to a new trial in the 1992 murder and alleged rape of an 84-year-old white woman. In an 8 – 1 decision on August 27, 2020, the court held that the discredited forensic testimony, “along with new DNA testing and the paucity of other evidence linking Howard to the…
Issues
Aug 21, 2020
Commentary: Tennessee’s Commitment to Racial Justice Tested as Attorney General Continues to Push for Execution in Case Rife with Racial Bias
Declaring that “[r]acism still exists and has no place in society,” the Tennessee Supreme Court on June 25, 2020 directed its Access to Justice Commission (AJC) to create “a new initiative to identify and eliminate barriers to racial and ethnic fairness and justice.” The court’s pronouncement, at the height of the racial justice protests that swept the nation following the murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer, was meant to signal its concern about racial bias in the…
Issues
Aug 10, 2020
Orleans Parish D.A. Will Not Run for Re-Election, Tenure Tainted By Office Misconduct in Death-Penalty Cases
After 12 years as Orleans Parish, Louisiana District Attorney, Leon Cannizzaro (pictured) has announced that he will not seek re-election and will be retiring as D.A. at the end of this term. Cannizzaro’s tenure in office was marked by his aggressive defense of prior official misconduct in capital cases, misconduct by his office while he was District Attorney, and revelations that Orleans Parish prosecutors had routinely issued fake subpoenas and threatened imprisonment to coerce victims and…
Issues
Aug 09, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of August 3, 2020
NEWS (8/6/20) — Connecticut: The Connecticut Supreme Court granted a new trial to former death-row prisoner Lazale Ashby. The court ruled that the prosecution had violated Ashby’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel “by using a jailhouse informant … to deliberately elicit certain incriminating statements from the defendant.” The court said that the informant, who had a past history of providing assistance to prosecutors, had been acting as an agent of the state when he extracted incriminating…
Issues
Jul 31, 2020
Investigation Exposes History of Misconduct by Leading South Georgia Homicide Prosecutor in Death Penalty Cases
A prominent South Georgia prosecutor, lauded for his success in capital prosecutions, has a history of misconduct in those cases, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative report has disclosed. Longtime Brunswick Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney John B. Johnson III, who joined the five-county prosecutor’s office in 1977, “has a dark legacy of problem cases,” the paper reports, including repeatedly withholding evidence from the defense in death penalty cases. The investigative…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Jul 24, 2020
Defense Seeks DNA Testing for Pervis Payne, Alleging Racism, Hidden Evidence, and Intellectual Disability Led to Wrongful Conviction
The Innocence Project and federal defenders have filed a motion in a Shelby County, Tennessee trial court seeking DNA testing of physical evidence hidden by prosecutors for 30 years that they believe will exonerate death-row prisoner Pervis Payne (pictured). Payne, who is scheduled to be executed on December 3, 2020, has steadfastly denied committing the crime. The lawyers argue that his conviction and death sentence are the combined product of racial bias by a prosecutor’s office with an…
Issues
Jul 22, 2020
Op-Ed by Death-Row Exoneree Derrick Jamison: “I was Within 90 Minutes of Execution for a Crime I Didn’t Commit”
Derrick Jamison survived six death warrants during his two decades on Ohio’s death row, coming within 90 minutes of being executed. After he was exonerated, on the day he walked free, his best friend on death row was executed. His story, he writes in a July 11, 2020 op-ed in the Tampa Bay Times, “illustrates everything that is wrong with the death penalty” and why it should be abolished. Jamison (pictured) was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 for the murder of a Cincinnati bartender.
Issues
Jul 06, 2020
Kareem Johnson Becomes Nation’s 170th Death-Row Exoneree Since 1973
Former Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Kareem Johnson has been exonerated, thirteen years after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death by a Philadelphia jury. On July 1, 2020, the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas completed his exoneration, formally entering an order dismissing all charges against him in his capital case. On May 19, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had barred his reprosecution because of prosecutorial misconduct that exhibited a conscious and reckless disregard for…
Issues
Jun 09, 2020
Walter Ogrod Exonerated After 23 Years on Pennsylvania’s Death Row
Twenty-eight years after Philadelphia prosecutors first sought to take his life for the murder of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, Walter Ogrod (pictured, second from right, with members of his defense team) has been exonerated from Pennsylvania’s death row. In a dramatic virtual hearing on June 5, 2020 that was attended by Ogrod, his family, Barbara Jean’s mother, counsel, and the media, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Shelley Robins New granted a joint motion by prosecutors and…
Issues
Jun 02, 2020
State Courts in Nevada, Pennsylvania Rule Prosecutorial Misconduct Bars Retrial, Exonerating Paul Browning and Kareem Johnson
State appeal courts in Nevada and Pennsylvania have barred the retrial of two former death-row prisoners as a result of prosecutorial misconduct, paving the way for their exonerations. On January 24, 2020, months after his release from prison, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the decision of a Las Vegas trial court that had dismissed all charges against former death-row prisoner Paul Browning (pictured, left), formally completing his exoneration. Then, on May 19, 2020, the Pennsylvania…
Issues
May 28, 2020
Texas Federal Judge Overturns Death-Row Prisoner’s Conviction, Finding Now-Celebrity TV Host Hid Evidence of Misconduct
A federal district court judge has overturned the conviction and death sentence of Texas death-row prisoner Ronald Prible, finding that celebrity “true crime” host Kelly Siegler (pictured) had engaged in extensive misconduct as a Harris County homicide prosecutor in Prible’s capital trial in 2002. U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison granted relief on six separate claims that Siegler hid exculpatory evidence from the defense, provided undisclosed favors to prison informants in exchange for them…
Issues
May 22, 2020
Former Georgia Death-Row Prisoner Reaches Deal Securing His Release After Serving 43 Years for a Murder He Says He Did Not Commit
Johnny Lee Gates (pictured) is free, 43 years after being sentenced to death in Georgia for a murder he has steadfastly maintained he did not commit. On May 15, 2020, Gates entered a so-called “Alford plea” on charges of manslaughter and armed robbery, meaning that he did not admit guilt, but conceded that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him. He was sentenced to 20 years on each charge, but was credited with time served and immediately released. “I’ve fought for 43 years for this…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,May 18, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of May 18, 2020
NEWS (5/22/2020) — Washington, D.C.: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has stayed the issuance of its mandate in the federal execution-protocol lawsuit until June 8, 2020, to allow the federal death-row prisoners to seek review in the U.S. Supreme Court. On November 21, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction barring the federal government from implementing the challenged protocol. A split panel of the appeals court…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,May 15, 2020
As Blood Spatter Evidence Causes Jurors to Question His Guilt, Missouri Prepares to Execute Walter Barton
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has vacated a stay of execution for Missouri death-row prisoner Walter Barton (pictured) who is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, May 19, 2020. The court’s unsigned opinion, issued on Sunday, May 17, lifted a stay of execution that had been issued May 15 by a federal district court judge. The district court said a stay was necessary to afford it time to address a petition Barton had filed that challenged his conviction and death sentence based…
Issues
May 14, 2020
Former Prosecutor, Now on Arkansas Supreme Court, Cited for ‘Bad Faith’ Destruction of Exculpatory Evidence in Death Penalty Case
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has found that a former prosecutor now serving as a justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court deliberately destroyed exculpatory evidence in a case in which he had sought the death penalty. On April 29, 2020, a unanimous three-judge panel of the federal appeals court affirmed the rulings of a federal district court overturning the convictions of life-sentenced prisoners Tina Jimerson and John Brown, Jr. because of the “bad faith” misconduct…
Issues
May 06, 2020
In Case Permeated with Race Bias, Tennessee Plans to Execute Possibly Innocent and Intellectually Disabled Black Man in Murder of White Woman
Pervis Payne (pictured) was young, black, and, he says, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The son of a minister, he is on death row in Tennessee, convicted of the horrific murders of a white woman and her two-year-old daughter and the stabbing of her three-year-old son in 1987. His case, profiled by Steven Hale in The Appeal on April 29, 2020, features evidence of innocence, intellectual disability, prosecutorial misconduct, and racial stereotyping. Payne is scheduled to be executed on…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,May 01, 2020
Missouri Supreme Court Denies Stay of May 19 Execution for Brain-Damaged Man Tried Five Times for the Same Murder
In a case long marred by prosecutorial misconduct, the Missouri Supreme Court has denied a stay of execution for Walter Barton (pictured), rejecting his claims of innocence and incompetence to be executed. The court’s ruling on April 27, 2020 made no mention of Barton’s additional request to put off his execution because of public health dangers relating to the coronavirus pandemic. If Barton’s execution is carried out as scheduled on May 19, it would be the first in the nation since the…
Issues
Apr 30, 2020
Federal Appeals Court Denies New Orleans Prosecutors Immunity for Allegedly Threatening Witnesses with Fake Subpoenas
A federal appeals court in New Orleans has ruled that Orleans Parish, Louisiana prosecutors who illegally issued fake subpoenas to intimidate reluctant witnesses into cooperating in murder and other criminal cases are not immune from being sued for their misconduct. The decision in Singleton v. Cannizzaro, issued April 21, 2020 by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, upheld a federal district court’s ruling that refused to dismiss a civil rights…
Issues
Apr 23, 2020
Release of Former Virginia Death-Row Prisoner Delayed as Police Protest Grant of Parole
The release of a former Virginia death-row prisoner has been delayed after police organizations demanded an inquiry into the Virginia Parole Board decision to grant parole to Vincent Lamont Martin (pictured), convicted of the 1979 murder of a Richmond police officer. Martin, who has been eligible for parole for 26 years, had been scheduled to be released on April 30, 2020 following a parole grant approved by a supermajority of the parole board earlier in the month. News reports indicate that…
Issues
Mar 31, 2020
Texas Appeals Court Rejects Recommendation for New Trial for Death-Row Prisoner
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has once again rejected the findings of a trial court that a death-row prisoner was entitled to relief from his conviction or death sentence. Applying a narrow interpretation of a 2013 junk-science law, the court on March 11, 2020 set aside the recommendation of an El Paso County trial court that death-row prisoner Rigoberto Avila should be granted a new trial as a result of the prosecution’s reliance on false and outdated scientific evidence. The…
Issues
Mar 23, 2020
Alabama Judge Denies New Trial for Toforest Johnson
A Birmingham judge has denied a new trial to Alabama death-row prisoner Toforest Johnson (pictured, center), saying he had not proven his claim that his conviction and death sentence for the killing of a sheriff’s deputy in 1995 were the product of prosecutorial misconduct. Johnson was convicted in 1999 of murdering Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputy William G. Hardy. Over the course of four different court proceedings, the state presented at least five different accounts of who committed the…
Issues
Mar 16, 2020
Georgia Supreme Court Votes 9 – 0 for New Trial for Former Death-Row Prisoner Johnny Gates
More than forty years after he was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white Columbus, Georgia jury for the rape and murder of a 19-year-old white woman, Johnny Lee Gates (pictured) will be getting a new trial. On March 13, 2020, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously held that DNA contained on physical evidence that police and prosecutors had withheld for decades raised “significant doubt” as to Gates’ guilt. The court’s 9 – 0 decision rejected an appeal by state prosecutors of a January…
Death Row
Foreign Nationals
,Federal Death Penalty
,Mar 12, 2020
News Brief — Federal Capital Case Dismissed Because of Prosecution’s 14-Year Delay
NEWS (3/12/20): Citing a 14-year delay by federal prosecutors in bringing the case to trial, a federal district court in Texas has dismissed a federal capital murder indictment against a Salvadoran man charged with killing two Honduran immigrants. The indictment alleges that the two victims were being held for ransom by a human-smuggling operation and that Wilmar Rene Gomez-Duran had tortured and murdered them after they tried to escape. Senior Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt (pictured) of the United…
Issues
Mar 06, 2020
Philadelphia D.A. Says Death-Row Prisoner Walter Ogrod is ‘Likely Innocent’
After a review of the case by its Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office has told a state trial court that death-row prisoner Walter Ogrod (pictured) is “likely innocent,” that newly discovered evidence showed that city prosecutors had violated his right to due process, and that his conviction and death sentence should be vacated. In briefing filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas on February 28, 2020, CIU Chief Patricia Cummings wrote that her…
Issues
Jan 23, 2020
A ‘Perfect Storm’ of Injustice — Death-Row Prisoner Christopher Williams Exonerated in Philadelphia Murder Case
In a case prosecutors now describe as a “perfect storm” of injustice, Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Christopher Williams (pictured) and his co-defendant Theophalis Wilson have been exonerated of a 1989 triple murder in North Philadelphia. On December 23, 2019, conceding that later-fired prosecutors had withheld “a plethora of significant material, exculpatory evidence,” the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges against Williams. Less than a month later, on January 21…
Issues
Nov 19, 2019
Civil Rights Groups File Class Action Lawsuit Against Mississippi Prosecutor Over Systemic Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection
Two civil rights organizations have filed a class action lawsuit against Mississippi prosecutor Doug Evans (pictured) seeking an end to what they describe as a “policy, custom, and usage of racially discriminatory jury selection.” The lawsuit, filed by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the MacArthur Justice Center on November 18, 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi on behalf of black prospective jurors in Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District, asks the…
Issues
Oct 23, 2019
Louisiana Man Freed 42 Years After Wrongful Conviction in Death-Penalty Trial
A Louisiana prisoner wrongfully prosecuted for capital murder has agreed to a plea deal that secures his freedom after spending 42 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. With the assistance of the Innocence Project New Orleans, Elvis Brooks (pictured) succeeded in overturning his 1997 conviction and agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges in exchange for his release on October 15, 2019. Taking the plea was “something I [didn’t] want to do, but I wanted my freedom.” Brooks…
Issues
Victims' Families
,Oct 07, 2019
Texas Court Reimposes Death Sentence in Case Where Prosecutor Lied to Jury that the Victim’s Family Wanted the Death Penalty
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has reinstated the death sentence of Paul Storey (pictured), after a Tarrant County judge had reduced his sentence to life because a prosecutor had lied at trial about the victim’s family’s views on the death penalty. In a divided opinion issued October 2, 2019, the court did not address the merits of Storey’s claim that his death sentence should be overturned because the prosecution had presented false evidence and argument to the jury, instead ruling that…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Sep 27, 2019
Tennessee Attorney General Asks State Supreme Court to Schedule Nine Executions and Undo Plea Deal that Took a Tenth Prisoner off Death Row
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery (pictured) has asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to set execution dates for an unprecedented nine death-row prisoners, the largest execution request in the modern history of Tennessee’s death penalty. On the same day, September 20, 2019, Slatery attempted to intervene in the case of death-row prisoner Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman to reactivate his death warrant and undo a court-approved plea deal with Nashville prosecutors that would overturn his death…
Issues
Sep 25, 2019
Execution Looms for One Texas Prisoner as Another Receives Stay from Texas Appeals Court
Texas is preparing to execute Robert Sparks (pictured, left), on September 25, 2019, as a second death-row prisoner, Stephen Barbee (pictured, below), received a stay from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Sparks’ case is the latest in which Texas prosecutors sought and obtained an execution warrant while appeals in the case were pending before state or federal courts. On May 6, 2019, Sparks court-appointed federal habeas counsel filed a petition for writ of certiorari asking the U.S.
Issues
Sep 19, 2019
American Bar Association Death Penalty Representation Project Has Removed 100 Prisoners from Death Row
In February 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the conviction and death sentence of Tennessee death-row prisoner Andrew Lee Thomas, Jr., ruling that Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich had unconstitutionally withheld evidence that a key prosecution witness had been paid for her cooperation in the case and then deliberately elicited perjured testimony from the witness that she had not received “one red cent” for her cooperation. Last month, pro bono…
Issues
Sep 06, 2019
Nevada Man Convicted by Prosecutorial Misconduct and ‘Woefully Inadequate’ Defense Counsel Released After 33 Years on Death Row
Thirty-three years after a trial a federal appeals court described as “a mixture of disturbing prosecutorial misconduct and woefully inadequate assistance of counsel,” a Las Vegas trial court freed Paul Browning (pictured) from Nevada’s death row. On August 21, 2019, Clark County District Judge Douglas Herndon — who in March had dismissed murder and related charges against Browning — ordered state corrections officials to release Browning from custody pending the outcome of the prosecution’s…
Issues
Aug 29, 2019
Samuel Bonner freed 37 years after wrongful capital prosecution in Los Angeles
Thirty-seven years after his wrongful capital prosecution and conviction for a murder he did not commit, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has set Samuel Bonner free. Citing “gross prosecutorial misconduct” that he said “shocks the conscience,” Judge Daniel J. Lowenthal(pictured) on July 11, 2019 ordered Bonner released from California state prison. Bonner was capitally tried for an apartment robbery and murder in 1983 under a law that permitted defendants who neither committed a…
Issues
Jun 21, 2019
Supreme Court Vacates Conviction in Mississippi Death Penalty Case Finding Race Discrimination in Jury Selection
Finding that a Mississippi prosecutor had intentionally struck black jurors in an attempt to empanel as white a jury as possible, the United States Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of death-row prisoner Curtis Giovanni Flowers. The Court’s 7 – 2 decision on June 21, 2019, found that Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District Attorney Doug Evans had undertaken extraordinary efforts to prevent African Americans from serving as jurors in six trials in which he has prosecuted Flowers for…
Jun 20, 2019
Prosecutors Eavesdropped on 120 Confidential Defense Calls in Kentucky Death-Penalty Case
A Kentucky capital defendant has moved to dismiss all charges against him or to bar the death penalty in his case as a result of evidence that prosecutors repeatedly eavesdropped on privileged attorney-client telephone calls over the span of a year. Lawyers for James Mallory (pictured) have filed a motion to dismiss the case for gross prosecutorial misconduct, alleging that prosecutors listened to recordings of 120 prison phone calls between Mallory and members of his legal team, totaling more…
Issues
Mar 21, 2019
Justices Express Concern About “Disturbing History” of Race Bias in Mississippi Death Penalty Case
The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to grant a new trial to Curtis Flowers (pictured), an African-American death-row prisoner tried six times for the same murders by a white Mississippi prosecutor who struck nearly every black juror from service in each of the trials. During oral argument in Flowers v. Mississippi on March 20, 2019, eight justices expressed concern that Flowers had been denied a fair trial as a result of race discrimination in jury selection in his case. Justice Samuel Alito…
Issues
Feb 28, 2019
Texas Plans to Execute Prisoner Whose Death Sentence Was Influenced by False and Unreliable Testimony
Texas is scheduled to execute Billie Wayne Coble (pictured) on February 28, 2019, despite court findings that two expert witnesses who testified for the prosecution gave “problematic” and “fabricated” testimony at his trial. Coble was sentenced to death in 1990 and resentenced in 2008 after his original sentence was overturned as a result of constitutionally deficient jury instructions. At his resentencing, the issue of future dangerousness presented a serious problem for prosecutors. Under…
Issues
Jan 18, 2019
Citing Evidence of Innocence, Race Discrimination, Georgia Court Grants New Trial to Former Death-Row Prisoner
A Georgia judge has granted a new trial to Johnny Lee Gates (pictured recently, right, and at the time of trial, left) based on new evidence that excludes him as the source of DNA on implements used by the killer during the 1976 rape and murder for which Gates was sentenced to death. DNA testing disclosed that Gates’s DNA was not found on a necktie and the bathrobe belt the prosecution said were used by the killer to bind Kathrina Wright, the 19-year-old wife of a soldier stationed at Fort…
Issues
Nov 06, 2018
Supreme Court to Review Mississippi Death-Penalty Case in Which Prosecutor Systematically Excluded Black Jurors
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review whether a prosecutor with a long history of racially discriminatory jury-selection practices unconstitutionally struck black jurors in the trial of Mississippi death-row prisoner Curtis Giovanni Flowers (pictured). On November 2, 2018, the Court granted certiorari in the Flowers’s case on the question of “[w]hether the Mississippi Supreme Court erred in how it applied Batson v. Kentucky,” the landmark 1986 Supreme Court decision barring the use of…
Issues
Oct 10, 2018
Texas Courts Rule for Two Death-Row Prisoners on Intellectual Disability, Junk-Science Claims
Two Texas prisoners took steps away from death row as state courts ruled in their favor on issues involving false or faulty scientific evidence and argument. On October 5, 2018, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) granted a stay of execution to Juan Segundo (pictured, left), directing a Tarrant County trial court to reconsider a claim of intellectual disability that the courts had previously rejected based on an unconstitutional, unscientific standard for measuring his functioning. Four…
Issues
Sep 17, 2018
Jurors in Henry McCollum Case Reflect on How They Sentenced an Innocent Man to Death
Four years after intellectually disabled brothers Henry McCollum and Leon Brown were exonerated of the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in North Carolina, jurors in McCollum’s case met with members of his defense team and reflected on how they sentenced an innocent man to death. In a September 6 op-ed in the Raleigh News & Observer, Kristin Collins — Associate Director of Public Information for North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation and a former News & Observer…
Issues
Military
,Aug 20, 2018
Military Commission Bars Guantánamo Death-Penalty Prosecutors From Using Statements by 9/11 Detainees
A Guantánamo military commission judge has barred prosecutors from using statements five accused 9/11 plotters made to the FBI after they had been subjected to years of torture in CIA black sites. On August 17, 2018, the military judge, Army Colonel James L. Pohl (pictured), suppressed all use of the statements, ruling that restrictions prosecutors had placed on the ability of defense counsel to interview witnesses and investigate the torture made it impossible for the defense to meaningfully…
Issues
New Voices
,Aug 15, 2018
Fox Commentator: Oklahoma “Frontier Justice” Has Produced “Wretched Record” of Wrongful Capital Convictions
Calling Oklahoma “the notorious home of ‘Hang ’Em High’ executions,” conservative commentator and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin (pictured) has urged the state to adopt sytemic reforms to address its “wretched record on wrongful convictions.” Malkin says that despite 35 exonerations in the last 25 years — including 7 death-row exonerations — and a “reign of prosecutorial terror and forensic error by the late Oklahoma County District Attorney Bob Macy and rogue Oklahoma City police department…
Issues
Jul 20, 2018
Ohio Governor Commutes Death Sentence Based on Jurors Concerns About Unfair Sentencing
Ohio Governor John Kasich (pictured, left) has commuted the death sentence imposed on Raymond Tibbetts (pictured, right) to life without parole, in response to a juror’s concerns about the unfairness of the sentencing proceedings in the case. It was the seventh time Kasich had commuted a prisoner’s death sentence. The July 20, 2018, news release announcing the commutation explained that Kasich had granted clemency because “fundamental flaws in [the] sentencing phase of [Tibbetts’s] trial …
Issues
Jun 20, 2018
Louisiana Prisoner Alleges Prosecutor Got Death Verdict By Coercing Witness, Presenting Fabricated Testimony
Michael Wearry, a Louisiana prisoner whose conviction and death sentence were overturned by the U.S Supreme Court in 2016 because prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence, has filed suit against Livingston Parish District Attorney Scott Perriloux (pictured) and former Sheriff’s Deputy Marlon Kearney Foster based upon new evidence that they deliberately fabricated testimony against him. Wearry’s complaint charges that the Louisiana officials “knowingly and deliberately fabricated” testimony…
Issues
Foreign Nationals
,Apr 18, 2018
Vicente Benavides, Sentenced to Death by False Forensics, to Be Freed After 26 Years on Death Row
Mexican national Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pictured), wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Kern County, California for supposedly raping, sodomizing, and murdering his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter, will soon be freed after nearly 26 years on death row. He will be the 162nd person and fifth foreign national exonerated from a U.S. death row since 1973. In a media advisory on April 17, 2018, Kern District Attorney Lisa Green announced on April 17, 2018 that her office would be…
Issues
Apr 10, 2018
After 22 Years, District Attorney’s Office to Examine Possible Innocence of Philadelphia Death-Row Prisoner
Twenty-two years after Walter Ogrod (pictured) was sentenced to death for a murder he insists he did not commit, a new Philadelphia District Attorney’s administration has dropped the office’s long-time opposition to Ogrod’s request for DNA testing and has referred the case for review by a revitalized Conviction Integrity Unit. As that review proceeds, an hour-long documentary on the case — aired April 8 as part of CNN’s Headline News Network series Death Row Stories — presents what Philadelphia…
Issues
Apr 05, 2018
NEW PODCAST — Racial Discrimination in Death-Penalty Jury Selection: A Conversation with Steve Bright
Race discrimination exists at every stage of the death-penalty process, says veteran death-penalty and civil-rights lawyer Stephen B. Bright (pictured), but “the most pervasive discrimination that is going on is in jury selection.” In a new Discussions With DPIC podcast, Bright — the former President of the Southern Center for Human Rights who has argued jury discrimination cases three times in the U.S. Supreme Court — calls the “rampant” racial discrimination in jury selection “a matter of grave…
Issues
Mar 23, 2018
Jury Notes Show Georgia Prosecutors Empaneled White Juries to Try Black Death-Penalty Defendants
New court filings argue that Columbus, Georgia prosecutors had a pattern and practice of systematically striking black prospective jurors because of their race, discriminatorily empanelling all- or nearly-all-white juries to try black defendants on trial for their lives in capital murder cases. In a supplemental motion seeking a new trial for Johnny Gates (pictured) — a black man sentenced to death by an all-white jury in 1977 for the rape and murder of a white woman — lawyers from the Southern…
Issues
Foreign Nationals
,Mar 14, 2018
California Supreme Court Grants New Trial to Man Sent to Death Row 25 Years Ago by False Forensic Evidence
The California Supreme Court has vacated the conviction of Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pictured), saying that the forensic evidence that sent the former Mexican farmworker to death row 25 years ago was “extensive,” “pervasive,” “impactful,” and “false.” Benavides, now 68, was sentenced to death in 1993 after being found guilty of brutally murdering Consuelo Verdugo, his girlfriend’s 21-month-old toddler, by raping and anally sodomizing her. However, the court said, medical evidence showed that…
Issues
Foreign Nationals
,Jan 02, 2018
Former Death-Row Prisoner Exonerated in Illinois, Seized by ICE
Former Illinois death-row prisoner Gabriel Solache (pictured), a Mexican national whose death sentence was one of 157 commuted by Governor George Ryan in January 2003, was exonerated on December 21, 2017 after twenty years of wrongful imprisonment, but immediately seized by agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Cook County prosecutors dropped charges against Solache and his co-defendant Arturo DeLeon-Reyes after Circuit Court Judge James Obbish overturned their…
Issues
Oct 25, 2017
Federal Court Rules to Protect the Interest of Incompetent North Carolina Death-Row Exoneree
A federal judge has voided a contract that had provided Orlando-based attorney Patrick Megaro hundreds of thousands of dollars of compensation at the expense of Henry McCollum (pictured left, with his brother Leon Brown), an intellectually disabled former death-row prisoner who was exonerated in 2014 after DNA testing by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission showed that he had not committed the brutal rape and murder of a young girl for which he had been wrongly convicted and…
Issues
Foreign Nationals
,Federal Death Penalty
,Military
,Oct 16, 2017
USS Cole Lawyers Resign From Guantánamo Death-Penalty Defense, Say Government Spied on Client Communications
The U.S. Supreme Court has denied review of a petition filed by lawyers on behalf of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri — accused of orchestrating al-Qaida’s October 12, 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole warship off the coast of Yemen — challenging the legality of his death penalty trial before a Guantánamo Bay military commission. But in what has been described as “a stunning setback” to what would have been the first death-penalty trial held before the special military tribunals established in the wake…
Issues
Oct 10, 2017
Texas Set to Execute Robert Pruett for Prison Murder Despite Corruption and Lack of Physical Evidence
Though no physical evidence links him to the crime, Texas is set to execute Robert Pruett (pictured) on October 12 for the 1999 stabbing death of a state correctional officer who was at the center of a prison corruption investigation. Results of a DNA test of the murder weapon in 2015 found DNA that matched neither Pruett nor the victim, Officer Daniel Nagle. According to Pruett’s pending clemency petition, Officer Nagle was working to identify corrupt correctional officers who had been…
Issues
Oct 05, 2017
John Thompson, Death-Row Exoneree and Social Justice Activist, Has Died
Death-row exoneree John Thompson (pictured), described by Innocence Project New Orleans director Emily Maw, as “an amazing force in the world” and a “national legend,” died October 3 at a New Orleans-area hospital after suffering a heart attack. Exonerated in 2003, Thompson had survived a corrupt Orleans Parish prosecution, seven death warrants, and an imminent execution by the state of Louisiana for a murder he did not commit. Following his release, he became a national advocate for criminal…
Issues
Sep 05, 2017
Three Years Later, Report Explores Lessons From Two North Carolina Death-Penalty Exonerations
On the third anniversary of their groundbreaking exoneration, a new report by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) reviews in-depth the long path from wrongful convictions and death sentences to freedom traveled by former North Carolina death-row prisoners Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. By the time DNA evidence exonerated the brothers of the 1983 rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie, McCollum had spent 30 years on death row and Brown was serving a life sentence for Buie’s…
Issues
Jul 17, 2017
Report Finds High Levels of Misconduct in Four Top Death Sentencing Counties
Four counties that rank among the most aggressive users of capital punishment in the United States have prolonged patterns of prosecutorial misconduct, according to a new report by the Harvard-based Fair Punishment Project. The report, “The Recidivists: Four Prosecutors Who Repeatedly Violate the Constitution,” examined state appellate court decisions in California, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee from 2010 – 2015, and found that prosecutors in Orange County, CA; Orleans Parish, LA; St. Louis…
Issues
May 31, 2017
Las Vegas Prosecutor Who Obtained Wrongful Capital Conviction Engaged in Pattern of Misconduct
A Las Vegas, Nevada, judge — who, as a prosecutor, committed misconduct in several death-penalty trials — now faces judicial misconduct charges arising out of another murder case in which a defendant he prosecuted has been granted a hearing to prove her innocence. The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline has charged Bill Kephart (pictured) with several violations of the judicial code of conduct for giving a media interview about his controversial 2002 prosecution of Kirstin Lobato that the…
Issues
May 02, 2017
Former Prosecutor on Trial on Charges that His Misconduct Led to Wrongful Execution of Cameron Willingham
John Jackson, the former Navarro County, Texas prosecutor and judge, is on trial for ethics violations in the 1992 capital trial of Cameron Todd Willingham (pictured), which many believe led to the execution of an innocent man. Willingham was convicted of arson and murder and sentenced to death in connection with the house fire that killed his three young daughters. Texas executed him in 2004. Willingham’s conviction and execution rested on two key pieces of testimony: arson testimony — since…
Issues
Jan 20, 2017
Isaiah McCoy Exonerated from Delaware Death Row, the 157th Death Row Exoneration Since 1973
Isaiah McCoy (pictured), a former Delaware death row inmate, was exonerated on January 19, 2017, when a judge acquitted him at a retrial. He is the 157th person exonerated from death row in the United States, the first in 2017, and the first in Delaware. McCoy was convicted and sentenced to death in 2012, but the Delaware Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 2015 as a result of prosecutorial misconduct and ordered a new trial. The Court suspended Deputy Attorney General R. David Favata…
Issues
Dec 29, 2016
First-Degree Murder Charges Dropped Against Two Former Pennsylvania Death Row Prisoners With Innocence Claims
On December 22, 2016, Pennsylvania prosecutors dropped first-degree murder charges against two former Pennsylvania death row prisoners who have asserted their innocence for decades. In courtrooms 100 miles apart, Tyrone Moore and James Dennis entered no-contest pleas to charges of third-degree murder, avoiding retrials on the charges that had initially sent the men to death row and paving the way for their release. A Luzerne County judge sentenced Moore to 20 years and released him from prison…
Issues
Dec 28, 2016
OUTLIER COUNTIES: Orange County, California Plagued by Misconduct Scandals
Orange County, California imposed nine death sentences between 2010 and 2015, more than 99.8% of American counties, and ranking it among the 6 most prolific death-sentencing counties in the country during that period. Over the last four years, patterns of misconduct have been revealed in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, sheriff’s office, and crime lab. In 2015, Judge Thomas Goethals disqualified District Attorney Tony Rackauckas (pictured) and the entire prosecutor’s office from…
Issues
Nov 17, 2016
Louisiana Supreme Court Orders New Trial for Rodricus Crawford in Controversial Caddo Parish Death Penalty Case
The Louisiana Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of Rodricus Crawford (pictured) and ordered that he be given a new trial in a controversial death penalty case that attracted national attention amid evidence of race discrimination, prosecutorial excess, and actual innocence. Crawford was convicted of murdering his young son based upon the testimony of a local doctor who claimed the boy had been suffocated, although autopsy results showed pervasive bronchopneumonia in the boy’s lungs…
Issues
Oct 20, 2016
OUTLIER COUNTIES: Former Death Penalty Capital Shows Signs of Change
Harris County, Texas, the county that leads the nation in executions, has served as a bellwether in recent years of the nationwide decline of the death penalty. Although the 10 new death sentences imposed in Harris County since 2010 are more than were imposed in 99.5% of U.S. counties, they are significantly fewer than the 53 new death sentences that were handed down in Harris in 1998 – 2003 and the 16 from 2004 – 2009. The 2016 Kinder Institute survey of Houston residents showed that just 27%…
Issues
Sep 29, 2016
Orange County, California Crime Lab Accused of Doctoring Murder Testimony to Help Prosecutors
The Orange County, California Crime Lab has been accused of doctoring its testimony about DNA evidence to favor the prosecution, after a senior forensic analyst offered conflicting conclusions that bolstered the prosecution in two separate murder cases. A motion filed on September 23 by the Orange County Public Defender’s office says prosecutor Kevin Haskins (now a judge) presented testimony from Senior Forensic Scientist Mary Hong in the 2008 capital murder prosecution of Lynn Dean Johnson…
Issues
Sep 23, 2016
OUTLIER COUNTIES: Legacy of Racism Persists in Caddo Parish, Which Had Nation’s Second-Highest Number of Lynchings
The death-sentencing rate per homicide in Caddo Parish, Louisiana was nearly 8 times greater between 2006 and 2015 than the rest of the state, making a parish with only 5% of Louisiana’s population responsible for 38% of the death sentences imposed statewide. Caddo currently has more people on death row than any other parish in the state. Known as “Bloody Caddo,” the parish had the second highest number of lynchings of any county in the nation. The Confederate flag flew in front of the steps…
Issues
Jun 21, 2016
U.S. Supreme Court Orders Reconsideration of Three Cases in Light of Jury Selection Decision
The U.S. Supreme Court granted writs of certiorari in three jury discrimination cases on June 20, vacating each of them and directing state courts in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to reconsider the issue in light of the Court’s recent decision in Foster v. Chatman. Two of the petitioners, Curtis Flowers of Mississippi and Christopher Floyd of Alabama, are currently on death row. The third, Jabari Williams, was convicted in Louisiana of second-degree murder. Earlier this year, the Supreme…
Issues
May 23, 2016
Supreme Court Rules Georgia Prosecutors Struck Death Penalty Jurors Because They Were Black, Grants New Trial
On May 23, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction and death sentence of Timothy Foster (pictured) because Georgia prosecutors improperly exercised their discretionary jury strikes on the basis of race to exclude African American jurors. The vote was 7 – 1, with Justice Thomas the lone dissenter. Foster is now entitled to a new trial. Foster, who is black, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury after prosecutors used their peremptory challenges to remove every black…
Executions
Botched Executions
,Apr 14, 2016
Oklahoma Knew It Had Used Unauthorized Drug Months Before It Aborted Richard Glossip’s Execution
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections knew it had used an unauthorized drug in the execution of Charles Warner nearly six months before it almost repeated the mistake in the aborted execution of Richard Glossip. Oklahoma executed Warner on January 15, 2015. Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveal that three months later, in April, the state medical examiner submitted a report to the Department on Warner’s autopsy, showing that he had been executed using potassium acetate, in violation of…
Issues
Mar 29, 2016
Finding Prosecutorial Misconduct, Alabama Courts Grant Relief from Two Capital Convictions
In one week, courts in unrelated cases have granted relief to two Alabama death row inmates because of prosecutorial misconduct. On March 11, Alabama Circuit Judge Robert Smith dismissed capital charges against ex-state trooper George Martin and barred his retrial because of the prosecution’s “willful misconduct.” Martin had been convicted for allegedly murdering his wife in a car fire. In 2000, jurors recommended that Martin be sentenced to life, but the trial judge overrode their…
Issues
Dec 28, 2015
Delaware Supreme Court Overturns Third Death Sentence in Two Years Due to Prosecutorial Misconduct
For the third time in two years, the Delaware Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of a death row inmate because his trial was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. On December 14, the court ordered a retrial for Chauncey Starling, who was convicted in 2003 of killing two people in a Wilmington barber shop, in part because prosecutors had failed to disclose that they had dropped charges against a key witness for violating his parole. Instead, prosecutors informed defense counsel that those…
Issues
Jul 29, 2015
Delaware Prosecutor Suspended for Misconduct in Capital Trial
The Supreme Court of Delaware voted unanimously on July 27 to suspend former Deputy Attorney General R. David Favata as a result of his misconduct during a recent capital trial. With a single dissent as to the length of the suspension, the Court banned Favata from the practice of law for six months and one day for intentional misconduct during the capital trial of Isaiah McCoy. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court overturned McCoy’s conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial…
Issues
Jun 22, 2015
STUDY: “The Hidden Costs of Wrongful Capital Prosecutions in North Carolina”
A new study by North Carolina’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation examines the financial and human costs of cases in which, “prosecutors sought the death penalty despite a clear lack of evidence, resulting in acquittal or dismissal of charges.” The report found 56 such cases in North Carolina since 1989, in which innocent people spent a total of 112 years spent in jail, with $2.4 million spent in defense costs alone in these weak death penalty cases. The authors compare these cases to those…
Issues
New Voices
,Jun 05, 2015
North Carolina Governor Formally Pardons Two Death Row Exonerees
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory granted pardons to Leon Brown (l.) and Henry McCollum (center, r.), allowing the two men to receive compensation for their wrongful convictions. Brown and McCollum are half-brothers who were convicted of the 1983 murder of an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to death. McCollum spent 30 years on death row before being exonerated by DNA evidence in 2014. Brown was released after 30 years in jail, eight of them on death row. At the time of their arrests, Brown was…
Issues
May 04, 2015
Charges Dropped Against Willie Manning; Becomes 153rd Death Row Exoneree
On April 21, 2015, Oktibbeha County (Mississippi) District Attorney Forrest Allgood announced that he would drop charges against death row inmate Willie Manning. In February, the Mississippi Supreme court granted Manning a new trial, saying that key evidence was withheld. Justice Michael K. Randolph wrote, “The State violated Manning’s due-process rights by failing to provide favorable, material evidence.” A witness testified that he saw Manning enter the victims’ apartment, but police records…
Issues
Women
,Mar 19, 2015
INNOCENCE: Debra Milke Exonerated from Arizona Death Row
UPDATE: On March 23, 2015, Judge Rosa Mroz officially dismissed the charges against Milke. Milke has been added to DPIC’s exoneration list. See Milke’s statement on her exoneration. PREVIOUSLY: On March 17, the Arizona Supreme Court denied a request by prosecutors that it review a lower court’s order that dismissed the charges against Debra Milke as a result of “egregious” police and prosecutorial misconduct and barring her retrial. The court’s decision effectively ends prosecutorial efforts to…
Issues
Dec 12, 2014
POSSIBLE INNOCENCE: Arizona Court Dismisses Charges Against Former Death Row Inmate
On December 11, an Arizona appeals court dismissed charges against Debra Jean Milke and barred retrial. Milke spent 22 years on death row on chargers of arranging the 1989 murder of her 4‑year-old son. She was the first woman sentenced to death in Arizona since 1932. In 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit overturned Milke’s conviction because the prosecution had withheld evidence about misconduct committed by their primary witness, Phoenix Detective Armando Saldate, who…
Issues
Oct 22, 2014
Former Death-Row Prisoners Freed In North Carolina
On September 2, 2014, Leon Brown (above) and Henry McCollum (below) were exonerated and released from prison in North Carolina. The two men, who are half brothers, had been convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to death in 1984. Brown was 15 at the time of the crime and McCollum was 19. Both men have intellectual disabilities and were interrogated under duress until they confessed to the crime. In 2010, Brown turned to the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry…
Issues
Oct 29, 2013
STUDIES: Prosecutorial Misconduct in Death Penalty Cases
In a four-part series on the conduct of prosecutors in capital cases, The Arizona Republic examined allegations by appellate attorneys that prosecutorial misconduct occurred in nearly half of the state’s capital cases since 2002. The study found that nearly half of the allegations were validated by the Arizona Supreme Court, though only two death sentences were vacated. The paper found there were seldom consequences to prosecutors for misconduct. Of all the allegations, only two resulted in…
Issues
New Voices
,Nov 02, 2010
Texas Prosecutors Accuse Former District Attorney of Egregious Misconduct in Innocence Case
At a recent press conference in Texas, prosecutors accused former district attorney Charles Sebesta of hiding and tampering with evidence, and of threatening witnesses in order to convict Anthony Graves in 1994. Graves was recently exonerated from death row and freed after 18 years of confinement for a crime he did not commit. Kelly Siegler, a special prosecutor hired to review Graves’s case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned his conviction, said Sebesta indicted…
Jun 26, 2003
NEW RESOURCE: Report Reviews Prosecutorial Misconduct
“Harmful Error,” a new report released by the The Center for Public Integrity, is the end product of an extensive two-year review of prosecutorial misconduct around the nation. The report notes that while many local prosecutors perform their difficult work admirably, inadvertent and intentional misconduct still permeates some district attorneys’ offices. Among other pieces of valuable information contained in the report, “Harmful Error” documents cases in which prosecutorial misconduct played a…