Publications & Testimony

San Bernardino County, California is one of five Southern California coun­ties that have pro­duced more death sen­tences since 2010 than 99.5% of all U.S. coun­ties. Along with its neigh­bors, Kern County, Riverside County, Orange County, and Los Angeles County, San Bernardino forms a ​“new Death Belt,” a region with high num­bers of death sen­tences marked by overzeal­ous pros­e­cu­tors and poor…

With new­ly dis­cov­ered con­fes­sions and DNA evi­dence point­ing to the prosecution’s chief wit­ness as the actu­al killer, the Florida Supreme Court, on October 27, vacat­ed the cap­i­tal con­vic­tion of death-row pris­on­er Clemente…

Kenya has com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of all 2,747 pris­on­ers on the nation’s death row. On October 24, President Uhuru Kenyatta signed orders spar­ing the lives of 2,655 men and 92 women who had been sen­tenced to death, com­mut­ing their sen­tences to terms of life in prison. While Kenya still autho­rizes the death penal­ty, it has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in near­ly 30 years. In August 2009, for­mer President Mwai Kibaki com­mut­ed the death…

Support for the death penal­ty in the United States is at its low­est lev­el since November 1972, accord­ing to a Gallup poll released October 25. Gallup report­ed that 60% of respon­dents said they sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment — off one per­cent­age point from last year — while oppo­si­tion remained at 37%, match­ing its high­est lev­el since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penal­ty in 1972. Support has dropped 9 points since 2007 and 20 points since its peak in 1994. The results reflect the same…

Sherman Brown (pic­tured), a man who was sen­tenced to death in Virginia in 1970 for the mur­der of a 4‑year-old boy, has filed a writ of actu­al inno­cence with the Virginia Supreme Court say­ing that DNA test­ing on recent­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence clears him of the crime. Brown’s peti­tion states: ​“Recent DNA test­ing demon­strates by clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence what I have main­tained for over 45 years: that I am inno­cent of this crime. The evi­dence against me at…

The death penal­ty adverse­ly affects both fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims and fam­i­lies of the accused, accord­ing to two recent jour­nal arti­cles. In his Psychology Today blog, Talking About Trauma, psy­chol­o­gist Dr. Robert T. Muller (pic­tured) reports that psy­cho­log­i­cal stud­ies have have found that the death penal­ty pro­duces neg­a­tive effects on fam­i­lies and friends of mur­der vic­tims (referred to as…

The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that death-row pris­on­ers who had unsuc­cess­ful­ly argued that they are inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty must be pro­vid­ed a sec­ond chance to prove their claims. On October 20, the Court decid­ed in Walls v. State that Florida must retroac­tive­ly apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 deci­sion in Hall v. Florida, which declared Florida’s pro­ce­dures for deter­min­ing intellectual…

Harris County, Texas, the coun­ty that leads the nation in exe­cu­tions, has served as a bell­wether in recent years of the nation­wide decline of the death penal­ty. Although the 10 new death sen­tences imposed in Harris County since 2010 are more than were imposed in 99.5% of U.S. coun­ties, they are sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er than the 53 new death sen­tences that were hand­ed down in Harris in 1998 – 2003 and the 16 from 2004 – 2009. The 2016 Kinder Institute sur­vey of Houston…

Edwin Meese III (pic­tured), who served as U.S. Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan, and Robert Morgenthau, the long-time dis­trict attor­ney of Manhattan who served as a U.S. attor­ney under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, believe that Alabama death row pris­on­er William Kuenzel is inno­cent and are urg­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case. Meese and Morgenthau belong to dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal par­ties and take oppos­ing views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but both believe…

Saying the death penal­ty is ​“too fal­li­ble to endure,” the Lincoln Journal Star has called on Nebraska vot­ers to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. In two edi­to­ri­als pub­lished in con­nec­tion with the upcom­ing statewide death penal­ty bal­lot ref­er­en­dum on November 8, the paper urged Nebraskans to retain the leg­is­la­ture’s death penal­ty repeal bill. The pre­dom­i­nant­ly Republican leg­is­la­ture vot­ed to repeal the state’s death penal­ty in May 2015 and then, a few days later,…