Publications & Testimony

An analy­sis by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice of the cost of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has found that cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tors seek the death penal­ty are more cost­ly than cas­es in which life with­out parole was the max­i­mum sen­tence. The Commission’s Death Penalty Working Group reviewed recent stud­ies of death-penal­­ty costs in Utah and across the coun­try and found that, while there was dis­agree­ment about the mag­ni­tude of the cost…

Five pris­on­ers on death row in Pennsylvania have filed a class-action law­suit chal­leng­ing the Commonwealth’s pol­i­cy man­dat­ing soli­tary con­fine­ment for all con­demned pris­on­ers. The five named plain­tiffs have been held in soli­tary con­fine­ment between 16 and 27 years each, kept in cells the size of a park­ing space, allowed out for a max­i­mum of two hours per day for exer­cise, and denied human con­tact with fam­i­ly mem­bers dur­ing prison vis­its. The…

Ohio Governor John Kasich (pic­tured, left) has grant­ed a reprieve to Raymond Tibbetts (pic­tured, right), tem­porar­i­ly halt­ing his exe­cu­tion to per­mit the Ohio Parole Board to con­sid­er a juror’s plea for mer­cy in the case. In a February 8 let­ter to parole board Chairman Andre Imbrogno, the Governor request­ed that the Board con­vene a hear­ing to con­sid­er con­cerns about the case raised by Ross Geiger, one of the Tibbetts jurors. To facilitate…

On February 5, the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to adopt a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the death penal­ty for offend­ers who were 21 or younger at the time of the crime. According to a report accom­pa­ny­ing the res­o­lu­tion,​“there is a grow­ing med­ical con­sen­sus that key areas of the brain rel­e­vant to deci­­sion-mak­ing and judg­ment con­tin­ue to devel­op into the ear­ly twen­ties.” The ABA first opposed apply­ing the death…

Raymond Wallace Shuman (pic­tured), whose case led to a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion affirm­ing the uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of manda­to­ry death sen­tences, has died in a Nevada prison at age 83. Shuman, one of the longest-incar­­cer­at­ed pris­on­ers in Nevada his­to­ry, was serv­ing a life sen­tence for a 1958 mur­der when he was con­vict­ed of killing a fel­low pris­on­er in 1973. At that time, Nevada law man­dat­ed the death…

The lat­est effort by death-penal­­ty pro­po­nents to rein­state the death penal­ty in New Mexico has died in a House com­mit­tee. House Bill 155, which would have brought back the death penal­ty for mur­ders of chil­dren, police offi­cers, and cor­rec­tions employ­ees, was tabled by the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee by a 3 – 2 vote fol­low­ing a Saturday hear­ing on the bill on February 3, 2018. The bill, intro­duced by Albuquerque Rep. Monica…

A juror who served on the cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al of Raymond Tibbetts (pic­tured) and vot­ed to sen­tence Tibbetts to death has writ­ten to Ohio Governor John Kasich ask­ing Kasich to halt Tibbetts’s sched­uled February 13 exe­cu­tion and com­mute his sen­tence to life with­out parole. In a January 30 let­ter to Governor Kasich, juror Ross Geiger — who, at the time of tri­al, described him­self as a con­ser­v­a­tive Republican — said after…

Anthony Ray Hinton spent thir­ty years con­fined on Alabama​’s death row for mur­ders he did not com­mit. Three years after his exon­er­a­tion and release, he has pub­lished a mem­oir of his life, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row, that recounts sto­ries from his child­hood, the cir­cum­stances of his arrest, the trav­es­ty of his tri­al, how he sur­vived and grew on death row, and how he won his freedom.

Severely restrict­ing the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty alto­geth­er would help rec­ti­fy some of the per­sis­tent racial dis­par­i­ties found in the United States’ crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, accord­ing to Cassia Spohn (pic­tured), the Foundation Professor of Criminology and Director of the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. In a chap­ter on Race and Sentencing Disparity in the recently…

Alabama pros­e­cu­tors have agreed that Renard Marcel Daniel (pic­tured) should be resen­tenced to life with­out parole, after the state’s men­tal health expert admin­is­tered psy­cho­log­i­cal tests to Daniel that showed the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled man had an IQ of 48. Earlier in January, Daniel’s lawyers — with the con­sent of the Alabama Attorney General’s office — filed a motion in fed­er­al dis­trict court joint­ly ask­ing the court to vacate…