Publications & Testimony

In a September 2, 2026, op-ed pub­lished in the Topeka Capital-Journal, Roger Werholtz, who served as Kansas Secretary of Corrections from 2003 to 2010, calls on Governor Laura Kelly to com­mute the sen­tences of the nine men on Kansas’ death row to life with­out parole. Writing as a for­mer cor­rec­tions offi­cial with expe­ri­ence in both Kansas and Colorado, Mr. Werholtz notes that the state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1965, yet​“Kansas has not been plagued by crime…

In 2025, the United States exe­cut­ed 47 peo­ple, the high­est total in over fif­teen years, while pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty fell to a fifty-year low and juries reject­ed death sen­tences in a major­i­ty of cap­i­tal tri­als. That same year, Pakistan held 3,394 peo­ple on death row — one of the largest con­demned pop­u­la­tions in the world — while main­tain­ing a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions that has been in place since December 2019 and fail­ing to implement legal…

Jimmie​“Chris” Duncan was released from Louisiana’s death row in 2025 but is still fac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a retri­al for the 1993 death of his girlfriend’s daugh­ter, 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux. Mr. Duncan has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence, and in June 2026, the Louisiana Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly affirmed a low­er court’s deci­sion find­ing him fac­tu­al­ly inno­cent. But in an inter­view with ProPublica and Verite News, he describes the​“hope­less” feeling of…

A first-of-its-kind law­suit chal­leng­ing California’s death penal­ty on sys­temic racial grounds has cleared an ini­tial hur­dle at the California Supreme Court and is now head­ed to an evi­den­tiary hear­ing in Sacramento Superior Court, accord­ing to report­ing from the Washington Post. The suit, filed by the ACLU, the Legal Defense Fund, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the Equal Justice Society, and the Office of the State Public Defender, argues that California’s capital…

The Death Penalty Information Center’s new report on race and the death penal­ty in Georgia places the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem in his­tor­i­cal con­text, doc­u­ment­ing how racial and state sanc­tioned vio­lence con­tin­ue to influ­ence today’s admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. Examining Georgia’s History of Racial Violence and Capital Punishment released August 2026, notes the state’s well-doc­u­­­men­t­ed use of state-sanc­­­tioned vio­lence that has disproportionately…

On August 25, 2026, the Ohio Parole Board rec­om­mend­ed, fol­low­ing a full clemen­cy hear­ing a week ear­li­er, that Governor Mike DeWine grant death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Tyrone Noling a com­mu­ta­tion and parole eli­gi­bil­i­ty begin­ning January 1, 2029. Mr. Noling had asked the parole board for a full par­don, but the board, in a split vote, instead rec­om­mend­ed a sen­tence com­mu­ta­tion and parole eli­gi­bil­i­ty. Mr. Noling has spent 30 years on Ohio’s death row for the murders of…

In her forth­com­ing arti­cle in the U.C. Irvine Law Review, Professor Alexandra L. Klein argues that the effect of exe­cu­tions on the peo­ple who car­ry them out has been large­ly over­looked in both legal schol­ar­ship and con­sti­tu­tion­al doc­trine. If the state choos­es to exe­cute some­one, she writes, some­one must per­form the killing, and the psy­cho­log­i­cal con­se­quences deserve a cen­tral place in con­ver­sa­tions about cru­el­ty under the Eighth Amendment. The author argues…