Publications & Testimony

With the back­ing of the state’s gov­er­nor and attor­ney gen­er­al, Democratic and Republican spon­sors of a bill to repeal Washington’s cap­i­tal-pun­ish­ment statute have expressed opti­mism that the state may abol­ish the death penal­ty in 2018. In 2017, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, was joined by for­mer Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, in call­ing on the leg­is­la­ture to end the state’s death penal­ty. Ferguson, who has said “[t]here is no role for capital…

States that have recent­ly abol­ished the death penal­ty have not expe­ri­enced the ​“parade of hor­ri­bles” — includ­ing increased mur­der rates — pre­dict­ed by death-penal­ty pro­po­nents, accord­ing to death-penal­ty experts who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the 2017 American Bar Association nation­al meet­ing in New York City. Instead, the pan­elists said, abo­li­tion appears to have cre­at­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to move for­ward with oth­er broad­er crim­i­nal justice…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…