Publications & Testimony

The costs of the death penal­ty are more than finan­cial, they are emo­tion­al; and these effects are felt not just by the par­ties to the tri­al and the fam­i­lies of vic­tims and defen­dants, but by the jurors as well. A recent report in the Akron Beacon Journal describes the trau­mat­ic psy­cho­log­i­cal impact serv­ing in the Summit County, Ohio death penal­ty tri­al of Eric Hendon had on the jurors in that case. After a three-month tri­al and capital-sentencing…

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed orders on February 27 for an unprece­dent­ed eight exe­cu­tions to be car­ried out over a peri­od of eleven days in April. The sched­uled dates for the four sets of dou­ble exe­cu­tions are: April 17, Bruce Ward and Don Davis; April 20, Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee; April 24, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams; and April 27, Kenneth…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit over­turned the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Andrew Lee Thomas, Jr. on February 24, rul­ing that Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly with­held evi­dence that a key pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness had been paid for her coop­er­a­tion in the case and then elicit­ed per­jured tes­ti­mo­ny from the wit­ness lying about the payment.

Human Rights Magazine, a quar­ter­ly pub­li­ca­tion by the American Bar Association, focused its first-quar­ter 2017 edi­tion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, mark­ing the 40^th anniver­sary of Gregg v. Georgia. Articles by nation­al­ly-renowned death penal­ty experts exam­ine geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in death sen­tences, secre­cy and lethal injec­tion, intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, men­tal ill­ness, and oth­er crit­i­cal ques­tions in the cur­rent dis­course around the death penal­ty. In the intro­duc­tion to the…

In an expan­sion of their stance oppos­ing nurse par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions, the American Nurses Association (ANA) announced on February 21, 2017 that the orga­ni­za­tion now for the first time oppos­es cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment itself. ​“Capital pun­ish­ment is a human rights vio­la­tion, and ANA is proud to stand in strong oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty,” ANA President Pamela F. Cipriano said. ​“All human beings, regard­less of their crimes, should be treat­ed with dig­ni­ty. For those states where capital…

Saying that the ​“law pun­ish­es peo­ple for what they do, not who they are,” the Supreme Court on February 22, 2017, grant­ed relief to Duane Buck (pic­tured, right), a Texas death-row pris­on­er who was sen­tenced to death after his own lawyer pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from a psy­chol­o­gist who told the jury Buck was more like­ly to com­mit future acts of vio­lence because he is black. Writing for the six-Justice major­i­ty, Chief Justice Roberts (pic­tured,…

In a retreat from one of its pri­or deci­sions, the Florida Supreme Court ruled on February 20 that pros­e­cu­tors could move for­ward with death penal­ty tri­als under Florida’s con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly flawed cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing statute, pro­vid­ed the tri­al court specif­i­cal­ly instructs the sen­tenc­ing jurors that they must unan­i­mous­ly find all facts that could make a defen­dant eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty and that they must unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend death before the tri­al judge may impose a…

In his newest book, The Death Penalty As Torture: From the Dark Ages to Abolition, John Bessler chron­i­cles the his­tor­i­cal link between tor­ture and the death penal­ty from the Middle Ages to the present day and argues that both are medieval relics. The book, released on February 17, 2017, asserts that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is itself a form of tor­ture, despite mod­ern legal dis­tinc­tions that out­law tor­ture while per­mit­ting death sentences and…

In an op-ed in the Memphis news­pa­per, The Commercial Appeal, for­mer Tennessee Attorney General W.J. Michael Cody (pic­tured) has expressed his sup­port for a bill that would exempt peo­ple with seri­ous men­tal ill­ness from the death penal­ty. Cody, who lat­er served as a mem­ber of the American Bar Association’s Tennessee Death Penalty Assessment Team, said that ​“as soci­ety’s under­stand­ing of men­tal ill­ness improves every day,” it is ​“sur­pris­ing that people…