Publications & Testimony
Items: 1861 — 1870
Jan 11, 2018
Idaho County Considers Leaving State Defense Fund As Way to Deter Capital Prosecutions
To deter future use of the death penalty in their county, the Blaine County, Idaho County Commissioners on January 2 voted to consider withdrawing from the state’s Capital Crimes Defense Fund as a way to choke off state funding in capital prosecutions. “This is a way for our county to say we don’t support the death penalty, and that we don’t want the prosecutor seeking it in Blaine County,” said Commissioner Larry Schoen (pictured), who proposed the…
Read MoreJan 10, 2018
Murder Victims’ Family Members Speak of Moving Forward, Without the Death Penalty
Family members of murder victims share no single, uniform response to the death penalty, but two recent publications illustrate that a growing number of these families are now advocating against capital punishment. In From Death Into Life, a feature article in the January 8, 2018 print edition of the Jesuit magazine America, Lisa Murtha profiles the stories of how several prominent victim-advocates against the death penalty came to hold those views. And in a recently…
Read MoreJan 10, 2018
U.S. Supreme Court Orders Federal Appeals Court to Reconsider Case Involving Racially Biased Juror
The U.S. Supreme Court has directed a federal appeals court to reconsider whether Georgia death-row prisoner Keith Tharpe (pictured) is entitled to federal court review of his claim that he was unconstitutionally sentenced to death because he is black. On January 8, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 6 – 3 opinion sending Tharpe’s case — in which a racist juror used an offensive slur to describe the defendant and doubted whether African Americans have souls — back to…
Read MoreJan 08, 2018
Conservative Voices Continue to Call for End of Death Penalty
From October 2016 to October 2017, support for capital punishment among those identifying themselves as Republicans fell by ten percetage points. Two op-eds published towards the end of the year illustrate the growing conservative opposition to the death penalty. Writing in The Seattle Times on December 27, Republican State Senator Mark Miloscia (pictured, l.) called for bipartisan efforts to repeal Washington’s death-penalty statute. In a December…
Read MoreJan 05, 2018
Retired Lt. General: Exclude Mentally Ill Vets from the Death Penalty
Saying that the death penalty should “be reserved for the ‘worst of the worst in our society,’” retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General John Castellaw (pictured) has urged the Tennessee state legislature to adopt pending legislation that would bar the death penalty for people with severe mental illnesses. In an op-ed in the Memphis newspaper, The Commercial Appeal, General Castellaw writes that the death penalty “should not be prescribed for those…
Read MoreJan 04, 2018
Pledging No Death Penalty, Larry Krasner Sworn In As Philadelphia’s District Attorney
Saying “[a] movement was sworn in today,” long-time civil-rights lawyer Larry Krasner (pictured) — who pledged to end Philadelphia’s use of the death penalty — took the oath of office on January 2 as district attorney in a county that only five years ago had the third largest death row of any county in the…
Read MoreJan 03, 2018
Virginia Governor Commutes Death Sentence of Mentally Incompetent Death-Row Prisoner
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe commuted the sentence of mentally incompetent death-row prisoner William Joseph Burns (pictured) on December 29, 2017, after multiple mental-health experts said Burns was unlikely to regain sufficient competency for his death sentence to ever be carried out. Burns, whose sentence was converted to life in prison without the possibility of parole, became the fifth death-row prisoner to have been granted clemency in the…
Read MoreJan 02, 2018
Former Death-Row Prisoner Exonerated in Illinois, Seized by ICE
Former Illinois death-row prisoner Gabriel Solache (pictured), a Mexican national whose death sentence was one of 157 commuted by Governor George Ryan in January 2003, was exonerated on December 21, 2017 after twenty years of wrongful imprisonment, but immediately seized by agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement…
Read MoreJan 01, 2018
Outcomes of Death Warrants in 2017
83 execution dates were scheduled in 12 states. 23 executions were carried out in 8 states.40 executions were stayed by courts. 3 executions were halted by reprieves by governors. 1 execution was halted by commutation. 1 failed execution was halted when execution personnel were unable to set an IV line. 15 executions were…
Read MoreDec 31, 2017
State Evidentiary Burdens for Proving Intellectual Disability
From the Appendix to Lauren Sudeall Lucas, An Empirical Assessment of Georgia’s Beyond A Reasonable Doubt Standard to Determine Intellectual Disability in Capital Cases, 33 Georgia State University Law Review 553, 607…
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