Lethal Injection Litigation:
Interview on CNN, Oct. 7, 2026
Expert on lethal injection landscape: ‘A recipe for disaster’
(USA News, Myers, Oct. 11, 2026)
Pike’s case “feels like déjà vu” to Columbia Law School’s Bernard Harcourt, who represented an Alabama inmate who survived a botched execution in 2018. Harcourt said he warned Alabama officials for months that they would likely not be able to establish an IV line for his client, Doyle Lee Hamm.
He said the state dismissed his warnings and that Hamm’s execution turned into an hours-long “horror story.”
“They tried his shins, his ankles, his feet, and then they finally moved to his groin and were poking and prodding him without any kind of anesthetic,” said Harcourt, whose book about the ordeal, “A Time to Live,” is coming in February. “They probably hit his bladder and possibly an artery because there was so much blood.”
Harcourt sued on Hamm’s behalf, and the state reached a confidential settlement agreement stating that Alabama would not try again to execute Hamm, who died of cancer on death row in 2021, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Following a separate court battle in which three news media outlets − including the USA TODAY Network’s Montgomery Advertiser − successfully sued Alabama for access to the state’s execution protocol, federal Judge Karon Owen Bowdre wrote of the importance of transparency, something Tennessee has been accused of lacking.
“The public,” Bowdre wrote, “needs to know how the State administers its laws; without such knowledge, the public cannot form an educated opinion on this very important topic.”
Harcourt said that a lot of members of the public don’t realize that executing someone by lethal injection isn’t all that simple.
“When you’ve got very qualified doctors or anesthesiologists in a hospital setting under perfect conditions, it’s relatively easy to place a line on somebody,” he said. “The problem is these executions are usually taking place late at night under very stressful and bizarre conditions … and the people who are doing it are just not very qualified.”
In Pike’s case, the state was attempting to carry out the execution almost 10 hours after it was initially scheduled because of a last-minute stay of execution that was later overturned. The state had until midnight to execute Pike or the process to re-schedule her death would have had to start anew. Plus, the doctor carrying it out had already botched another execution four months beforehand.
“It’s just a recipe for disaster,” Harcourt said. “And this is tragically not unexpected, particularly when you have states who simply disregard the warning signs and believe that everyone is just faking or trying to avoid justice. You just get these travesties of injustice for everyone.”
Interview on Fox, Oct. 7, 2026
Bloomberg News Podcast, Oct. 6, 2026
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Deportation Litigation:
Nascimento Blair is now back in Jamaica, having been deported by the Trump administration shortly after President Trump took office on February 27, 2025. Professor Bernard E. Harcourt is helping Mr. Blair with his case. The New York Times published a long-form essay on Mr. Blair’s deportation and life now in Jamaica.
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Death Penalty Litigation:
David Wilson has been on Alabama’s death row at Holman Prison since 2008. He is represented by Professor Bernard E. Harcourt, and his federal habeas petition and §1983 methods of execution challenge are currently before the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama. For additional information and updates on the case, please visit the CCCCT website.
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Guantanamo Bay Litigation:
Abdul Latif Nasser Transferred Home to Morocco (July 2021)
More information on Mr. Nasser’s case here.
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Recipient of the New York City Bar Association’s Norman J. Redlich Capital Defense Distinguished Service Award for his work on behalf of individuals on death row
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Bernard E. Harcourt challenges constitutionality of lethal injection in Alabama death penalty case
last updated: March 30, 2018
Bernard E. Harcourt, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science, and Director of the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought, has represented death row inmate Doyle Lee Hamm since 1990.
Hamm, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1987 for the robbery-murder of a Cullman County motel clerk, Patrick Cunningham, challenged his capital sentence for more than 31 years. Since 2014, Hamm has been battling lymphatic cancer and carcinoma. Treatment for the illness has compromised Hamm’s veins–Harcourt argued that lethal injection would likely cause “cruel and needless pain.”
After signing a confidential settlement agreement, Harcourt jointly moved with the State of Alabama to dismiss Hamm’s civil rights lawsuit and federal habeas corpus petition in the Northern District of Alabama in Birmingham, as well as his state post-conviction Rule 32 petition in Cullman County, Alabama. This will end efforts at setting another execution date.
This story is being covered by several outlets
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Litigating Executive Power and Islamophobia
Attorney Thomas A. Durkin and Professor Bernard E. Harcourt represented pro bono Dr. Al Homssi who was adversely affected by the Executive Order banning Muslims entered on January 29, 2017, and challenged the constitutionality of the EO under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Complaint filed in Federal Court N.D.Ill.
The New Yorker Part 1: A Syrian Doctor with a Visa is Suing the Trump Administration
The New Yorker Part 2: A Syrian Doctor Returns to Illinois
Bernard E. Harcourt on RTS Swiss Radio on the Muslim Ban, March 27, 2017
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Another Challenge in Visa Case (September, 2017)
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Life Imprisonment without Parole Litigation
Phillip Tomlin was convicted of capital murder in Mobile County, Ala., in 1978 and sentenced to death. After 27 years on death row, Tomlin’s capital sentence was vacated in 2004 and he was resentenced to life imprisonment without parole (LWOP). For the past 36 years, Tomlin has been challenging the various judicial reinterpretations of the 1975 Alabama Death Penalty Statute. In June 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta finally agreed to hear his challenge to the 1975 statute under which he is sentenced to LWOP. Tomlin filed his brief at the 11th Circuit on Oct.6, 2014, with the assistance of the center. On July 16, 2015, the Eleventh Circuit vacated the district court’s denial of the habeas corpus petition and remanded for further review of the LWOP challenge.