An in-depth study of botched lethal injection executions in the U.S. conducted by Reprieve, the London-based NGO that has spent the last 25 years defending those who are facing or have experienced human rights abuses, finds that “Black people had 220% higher odds of suffering a botched lethal injection execution than white people.” Georgia is just one example. Eighty-six percent of its botched executions were of Black people, although Black individuals accounted for only 30% of all executions.
“My role in the wrongful conviction of an innocent man keeps me awake at night,” a member of the jury that sentenced Toforest Johnson to death in 1998 writes in AL.com Monique Hicks writes that she didn’t think about Johnson “for more than two decades,” until three former state supreme court justices, two former governors, several former attorneys general, and, most shocking for her of all, the man who prosecuted Johnson, and obtained a death sentence. “Yes – the very same prosecutor who stood in front of the jury, looked us in the eyes, and told us Toforest Johnson was guilty and deserved to die. He has publicly called for a new trial. He has said that if he had the power to order a new trial, he would do it today,” she writes. She says she now is “convinced and know in my heart that Mr. Johnson is innocent.”
“The overuse of solitary confinement remains a stain on our nation.” With those words, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin opened the U.S. Judiciary Committee hearing, “Legacy of Harm: Eliminating the Abuse of Solitary Confinement,” in Washington, D.C., this month. Durbin noted that he chaired the country’s first-ever hearing on the issue in 2012 and that virtually nothing has changed. The hearing began with searing videotaped testimony from several individuals who had been subjected to long periods of solitary confinement, including Damon Thibodeaux, an exoneree who died in 2018 from Covid complications, and Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years on death row and 16 years in solitary confinement and was then exonerated and released from prison.