Publications & Testimony

A new report by Amnesty International says Florida​’s approach to redress­ing the near­ly 400 uncon­sti­tu­tion­al non-unan­i­mous death sen­tences imposed in the state has deep­ened its sta­tus as an out­lier on death-penal­ty issues by ​“add[ing] an extra lay­er of arbi­trari­ness to [the state’s] already dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and error-prone cap­i­tal justice…

A new study by an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team of Arizona State University psy­chol­o­gy researchers has found a link between the actu­al and per­ceived scarci­ty of resources and sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The study, cur­rent­ly in press but avail­able online on August 10 in the sci­ence jour­nal, Evolution and Human Behavior, dis­cov­ered that coun­tries with greater resource scarci­ty were more like­ly to have a death penal­ty, as were U.S. states with low­er per capi­ta…

As lawyers for Nevada told their state supreme court that a con­tro­ver­sial Nebraska exe­cu­tion had been car­ried out with­out prob­lems, a fed­er­al judge issued a rul­ing allow­ing a law­suit to pro­ceed that would force California to allow media wit­ness­es to observe exe­cu­tions in that state in their entire­ty. The devel­op­ments in the cas­es in the two states high­light an ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy over the lack of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty in recent…

In his recent arti­cle, Reckoning with History: The lega­cy of lynch­ing in the West, his­to­ri­an Adam Sowards chal­lenges the view roman­ti­cized in American pop­u­lar mythol­o­gy that ​“fron­tier jus­tice” was a nec­es­sary com­mu­ni­ty response in ​“a vio­lent fron­tier where the need for jus­tice some­times pre­ced­ed an estab­lished legal sys­tem.” In fact, he says, although Westerners cre­at­ed an elab­o­rate rhetoric of a ​“Western vig­i­lante tra­di­tion” to dif­fer­en­ti­ate their posse killings…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has released its annu­al report on issues, trends, and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The new pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2018, includes a chap­ter by Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, describ­ing sig­nif­i­cant death penal­ty cas­es and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment devel­op­ments over the past…

An Arizona appeals court judge has urged the state’s supreme court to rule that the death penal­ty vio­lates Arizona’s state con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. In an August 16, 2018 opin­ion dis­sent­ing from the Arizona Supreme Court’s affir­mance of death-row pris­on­er Jason Bush​’s con­vic­tion and sen­tence, Court of Appeals Judge Lawrence Winthrop (pic­tured) — sit­ting by des­ig­na­tion in the case because of the recusal of…

A Guantánamo mil­i­tary com­mis­sion judge has barred pros­e­cu­tors from using state­ments five accused 9/​11 plot­ters made to the FBI after they had been sub­ject­ed to years of tor­ture in CIA black sites. On August 17, 2018, the mil­i­tary judge, Army Colonel James L. Pohl (pic­tured), sup­pressed all use of the state­ments, rul­ing that restric­tions pros­e­cu­tors had placed on the abil­i­ty of defense coun­sel to inter­view wit­ness­es and inves­ti­gate the tor­ture made it…

When the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penal­ty for juve­nile offend­ers in 2005 in Roper v. Simmons, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opin­ion for the Court acknowl­edged the inher­ent arbi­trari­ness in select­ing an age cut­off. ​“The qual­i­ties that dis­tin­guish juve­niles from adults do not dis­ap­pear when an indi­vid­ual turns 18,” he wrote. ​“However, a line must be drawn.” New neu­ro­science research sug­gests that the age-18 line may be too low. The court’s opin­ion in…

Nineteen years after hav­ing been sen­tenced to death in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, and five years after win­ning a new tri­al, Ronald Champney entered a no-con­test plea to less­er charges in a plea deal that could soon set him free. Under the plea deal, which the court accept­ed on August 10, 2018, Champney agreed — with­out admit­ting guilt — that pros­e­cu­tors had suf­fi­cient evi­dence for a jury to con­vict him of third-degree mur­der and possessing…

Calling Oklahoma ​“the noto­ri­ous home of ​‘Hang ​’Em High’ exe­cu­tions,” con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tor and Fox News con­trib­u­tor Michelle Malkin (pic­tured) has urged the state to adopt sytemic reforms to address its ​“wretched record on wrongful…