A reminder that when I'm not writing and edition about the criminal legal system, I'm editing and writing about climate action at @skylightnyc.bsky.social ! Check out the website and sign up for our newsletter here:
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I'm very glad for it to now be published, and grateful to @motherjones.com for being a publishing partner, to @jacobrosenberg.bsky.social whose edits made the piece so much stronger, and @katrinajanco.bsky.social for her impeccable fact-checking.

I hope you’ll take time to read what is maybe @bolts.bsky.social most ambitious story to date. @psfrench.bsky.social spent the better part of a year reporting this story, on calls with Chris, a trip to Louisiana, and sifting through hundreds of pages of documents.
boltsmag.org/the-human-co...

Chris’ fate still hangs in the balance. His lawyers have been working furiously for years to prove his conviction should be overturned, but now that Landry restarted the machinery of execution, it underscores what could await him if they're unsuccessful.
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Just this week, Landry made his goal a reality: On Tuesday night the state executed Chris' friend Jessie Hoffman Jr. by nitrogen hypoxia. It was the first execution the state had seen in more than a decade. apnews.com/article/exec...

But LA governor Jeff Landry, is no great fan of appeals. Since he took office, he’s been keen to resume executions and he and his AG have signalled a, let’s say, impatience with the appeals process along the way. To them, these safeguards are roadblocks.
boltsmag.org/the-human-co...

That’s why a person’s right to appeal is so important in death penalty cases. Before the state ends a life, they have to make sure “avenues of potential innocence or procedural violation have been explored, that there is truly no room left for doubt.”
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

But his case is also emblematic of how often the criminal justice system gets it wrong—and how incredibly high the stakes are when the state literally holds people’s lives in its hands. Capital convictions in Louisiana esp have sky-high reversal rates.
boltsmag.org/the-human-co...

Chris’ story is marked by incredible twists and turns that made for a deck against him: a conviction back in the 90s based on junk science, testimony from discredited medical experts who, a jailhouse snitch who recanted—the list goes on.
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...