Blog of Rights
Brian
Stull

Brian Stull is a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. He has served as trial and appellate counsel in capital cases in North Carolina and Texas. Before joining the ACLU, Stull worked for five years at the Office of the Appellate Defender (OAD) in New York City, where he represented indigent criminal defendants convicted of serious felonies on direct appeal and in post-conviction and federal habeas corpus proceedings. Stull holds a B.A. and a M.S.W. from the University of Michigan and graduated cum laude from New York University School of Law.

12/18/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Velez Hearing Wraps Up With Summations, Offers Lessons on Role of Counsel

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 12:02pm

Yesterday was the final day of the hearing in Brownsville, Texas, for ACLU client and former death-row prisoner Manuel Velez.  Judge Elia Cornejo Lopez heard summations, requested the parties to prepare proposed findings for her consideration, and announced that a decision would come at a later date.

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12/13/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Day 2 of Velez Hearing: State’s Witness Dismantles State’s Timeline Theory

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 11:22am

We’re in day 2 of the Manuel Velez innocence hearing in Brownsville, Texas.  As we’ve previously explained, this case posed a dilemma because two adults were in a Brownsville home on Halloween 2005 when 11-month- old Angel Moreno was taken to the hospital unable to breathe. Both adults, Manuel Velez and Acela Moreno, the boy’s mother, pointed the finger at one another as the perpetrator.  But no witness, physical, forensic, or other evidence suggests Manuel ever hurt this or any other child.

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09/08/2011

Prosecutors Delay Historic Racial Justice Act Hearing

By Anna Arceneaux, Staff Attorney, ACLU Capital Punishment Project & Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 3:17pm

More than two years after the North Carolina Legislature enacted an historic law barring race discrimination in death penalty cases, Marcus Robinson and his lawyers were in Cumberland County Superior Court earlier this week to argue his claim under the Racial Justice Act (RJA). They came prepared to present statistics showing that prosecutors across North Carolina discriminated against African-Americans who had come to court willing and able to serve on juries. A courtroom of concerned citizens came to hear this evidence. Prosecutors, however, were not ready to confront it. In fact, the entire hearing centered on why the prosecutors claimed not to be ready.

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10/22/2010

Texas Court’s Bar on Unreliable Forensic Testimony Comes Too Late for Many

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 3:25pm

Under Texas law, a jury must unanimously find an inmate will pose a threat of future danger before it can sentence him to death. Many juries rely upon the testimony of psychiatrists and other doctors to make their determination.

Dr. Richard Coons, a Texas forensic psychiatrist, is one such doctor. Dr. Coons has testified in dozens of capital cases that the defendant would pose a threat of future danger if not executed.

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08/11/2009

North Carolina Moves Against Executions Based on Race

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 5:44pm

"Ain't it a great day in North Carolina!" North Carolina General Assembly Representative Larry Womble celebrated with these words this morning, moments before North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue signed into law a bill Rep. Womble championed entitled the "Racial Justice Act". The bill will allow criminal defendants facing the death penalty to introduce statistics as evidence of impermissible racial discrimination in their capital sentencing proceedings.

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12/17/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Velez Hearing Day 4: Plight of Victim’s Family Shows That Death Penalty is the Wrong Priority

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 10:44am

Day 4 of the Manuel Velez innocence hearing on Friday in Brownsville, Texas...

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10/01/2010

Medication Shortage Reveals Some States' Shamefully Wrong Priorities

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 12:35pm

The last-minute legal maneuverings over the pending execution of Albert Brown in California this past week put a spotlight on sodium thiopental, one of drugs used in lethal injection executions.

Physicians use sodium thiopental as an anesthetic for patients undergoing surgery. In most all of the 35 states with the death penalty, prisons use sodium thiopental as part of a lethal three-drug cocktail to execute condemned inmates.

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06/09/2008

Safe and Free Without the Death Penalty: Lessons from Bo Jones and the Capital Punishment Experiment

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 6:35pm

On May 1, 2008, a man woke up in Raleigh Central Prison, then completing his 16th year in prison for a murder he did not commit, having spent nearly 14 of those years on death row. Yesterday, that same man was driving with his sister from Sanderson, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C. Once he arrived in D.C., he had the pleasure of getting lost in our nation’s capital, thanks to unreliable internet directions. That man was Levon “Bo” Jones, the 129th innocent man to be released from death row since 1973. Bo was released through the work of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, and he was driving to D.C. to join us at our Membership Conference.

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12/12/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

Day 1 of Velez Innocence Hearing: A Family Comes to Court for Justice

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 12:34pm

The façade of the U.S. Supreme Court bears the motto “equal justice under law.” But that ideal is not confined to our high court. People across this nation seek out the courts for equal justice

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07/17/2012
U.S. Death Penalty

A Tale of Three States: Executing the Mentally Disabled

By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 3:54pm

Georgia: On Monday, the State of Georgia stands ready to strap Warren Hill to a gurney, place IV lines in his arms, and pump his body with poison until he dies.  Warren Hill has an IQ of 70, and is intellectually disabled (mentally retarded).  That was the finding of a Georgia trial judge who held a hearing and looked at the relevant evidence – applying United States Supreme Court precedent barring execution of the intellectually disabled under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the court ruled that Hill could not be executed.

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