Publications & Testimony

Nearly half of all exe­cu­tions to date in 2025 in Iran (244) and Saudi Arabia (50) have been for drug-relat­ed crimes, track­ing close­ly pat­terns doc­u­ment­ed by Harm Reduction International (HRI) for 2024. According to HRI’s new report, The Death Penalty for Drug Offenses: Global Overview 2024, the use of the death penal­ty for drug-relat­ed crimes reached​“cri­sis lev­els” in 2024. At least 615 peo­ple were known to be exe­cut­ed on drug-relat­ed charges world­wide, 607 of which took…

A joint inves­ti­ga­tion by ProPublica and ABC15 Arizona reviewed more than 300 cas­es over the past two decades where Maricopa County pros­e­cu­tors sought the death penal­ty and found that only 13% result­ed in death sen­tences. In most cas­es a jury nev­er got close to con­sid­er­ing whether to sen­tence some­one to death: in more than three-quar­ters of cas­es, defen­dants pled guilty in exchange for less­er pun­ish­ment, or pros­e­cu­tors reversed course before tri­al. In only 41 of…

When a lawyer makes a mis­take, who suf­fers the con­se­quences? The​“agency prin­ci­ple” says the client does, under the ratio­nale that clients choose their lawyers and autho­rize their actions. But courts uni­ver­sal­ly apply this prin­ci­ple to all attor­ney-client rela­tion­ships, includ­ing when indi­gent, iso­lat­ed death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers are appoint­ed attor­neys by the state, with lit­tle or no means of con­trol­ling their lawyers’ actions. Many com­men­ta­tors have noted the…

More than one hun­dred bills have been intro­duced this year in 34 states and in Congress to expand and lim­it use of the death penal­ty, abol­ish and rein­state the death penal­ty, mod­i­fy exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols and secret the infor­ma­tion about them, and alter aspects of cap­i­tal tri­als. Thus far, nine bills in five states have been enact­ed, with Florida enact­ing the most leg­is­la­tion. Of the bills that have been signed into law, three mod­i­fy exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols; two expand…

On April 16, 2025, Wyandotte County District Judge Bill Klapper issued his order in the com­bined cas­es of Hugo Villaneuva-Morales and Antoine Fielder, broad­ly con­demn­ing the Kansas death penal­ty as cost­ly, racial­ly biased, and inef­fec­tive as a deter­rent. Judge Klapper’s order fol­lows an exten­sive evi­den­tiary hear­ing and pro­vides thor­ough and detailed find­ings on an array of con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions relat­ed to the use of the death penal­ty in the state. Mr.

On May 8, 2025, Mikal Deen Mahdi’s lawyers sub­mit­ted to the South Carolina Supreme Court the state pathol­o­gy report in his case which sug­gests that Mr. Mahdi’s exe­cu­tion last month by fir­ing squad did not go as planned. Pathologists report­ed that not only did Mr. Mahdi have two wounds as opposed to the antic­i­pat­ed three wounds from three South Carolina Corrections Department (SCDC) shoot­ers, but also that they missed the intend­ed tar­get over his heart, prolonging his…