Publications & Testimony

Weighing in on California’s com­pet­ing death penal­ty bal­lot ini­tia­tives, the San Jose Mercury News edi­to­r­i­al board urged vot­ers to sup­port repeal of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and reject a pro­pos­al to speed up exe­cu­tions. The edi­to­r­i­al called California’s death penal­ty sys­tem, ​“a fail­ure on every lev­el,” not­ing that the state has spent $4 bil­lion to car­ry out just 13 exe­cu­tions and the $150 mil­lion annu­al sav­ings the inde­pen­dent Legislative Analysts Office says death penalty…

A recent arti­cle in The Economist exam­ines the state of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Louisiana and the state’s strik­ing decline in the use of the death penal­ty. In 1987, its peak year for exe­cu­tions, Louisiana exe­cut­ed eight pris­on­ers. Since 2002, the state has had just one exe­cu­tion. This decline ​“is far more pre­cip­i­tous than in neigh­bor­ing states like Mississippi and Alabama,” which the arti­cle says have each exe­cut­ed more than 10 peo­ple since…

James Willie ​“Bo” Cochran, who spent 19 years on Alabama​’s death row for a killing he did not com­mit, has died at age 73. His lawyer, Richard Jaffe, said that Mr. Cochran and his case ​“are rea­sons why the death penal­ty does not work. He did not kill any­one, was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and found inno­cent because he had lawyers that took up his cause.” Mr. Cochran, who is black, was found guilty and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a white gro­cery store clerk.

The exe­cu­tion of John Conner on July 15 end­ed a two-month peri­od with­out exe­cu­tions in the United States, the longest such peri­od in the coun­try since 2007 – 2008. A range of state-spe­cif­ic issues have con­tributed to this stop­page, includ­ing ques­tions about the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of state death penal­ty prac­tices, prob­lems relat­ing to lethal injec­tion drugs and state exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols, and the fall­out from botched…

A court hear­ing is under way in the cap­i­tal tri­al of Donald Fell in a Vermont fed­er­al dis­trict court chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. This week, death penal­ty experts tes­ti­fied for the defense about sys­temic prob­lems Fell’s lawyers say may ren­der the fed­er­al death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Fell was sen­tenced to death in 2006, but was grant­ed a new tri­al because of juror mis­con­duct. The hear­ing began on July 11 and is scheduled…

Georgia is con­tin­u­ing with prepa­ra­tions to exe­cute John Conner (pic­tured) on July 14 after the state’s Board of Pardons and Paroles denied his clemen­cy peti­tion and the Georgia Supreme Court denied him a stay of…

In a land­mark rul­ing in McCleskey v. Kemp in 1987, a bit­ter­ly divid­ed U.S. Supreme Court vot­ed 5 – 4 vote that sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty was insuf­fi­cient to over­turn an indi­vid­ual death sen­tence. A new book, Race and the Death Penalty: The Legacy of McCleskey v. Kemp, edit­ed by David P. Keys, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice at New Mexico State University and R.J. Maratea of the Youth Research…

During his 45 years in law enforce­ment, includ­ing 24 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tor Tom Parker (pic­tured) changed his view on the death penal­ty. ​“There were times dur­ing my career when I would glad­ly have pushed the but­ton on a mur­der­er,” he said. ​“Today, my posi­tion would be, life with­out parole.” Parker says that see­ing cor­rupt homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tions con­vinced him that inno­cent peo­ple could be exe­cut­ed. As result, he now opposes…

A fed­er­al court jury has award­ed six Nebraska exonerees (pic­tured, at their exon­er­a­tion) $28 mil­lion in dam­ages for offi­cial mis­con­duct that led to their wrong­ful con­vic­tions in the 1985 rape and mur­der of Helen…

In a chap­ter from the recent­ly released American Bar Association pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2016, Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, describes sig­nif­i­cant trends and recent cas­es relat­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Tabak high­lights the ongo­ing declines in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions across the United States, as well as the increas­ing con­cen­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in a small num­ber of…