Publications & Testimony

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…

Just days after a split Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, Arkansas’ sup­ply of vecuro­ni­um bro­mide — a par­a­lyt­ic agent used in the state’s three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col — expired, leav­ing the sta­tus of future exe­cu­tions unclear. At that time, Governor Asa Hutchinson said that he want­ed the Department of Correction to obtain a new sup­ply of the drug rather than change the state’s method of exe­cu­tion. In 2015, the state spent $25,000 for lethal…

Forty years after Gregg v. Georgia ush­ered in the mod­ern era of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States, the death penal­ty is in decline across the coun­try and in Texas. The Lone Star State con­tin­ues to lead the nation in exe­cu­tions — with near­ly half of all exe­cu­tions in the U.S. this year — but the Amarillo Globe-News reports that few­er Texas pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing death sen­tences and few­er juries are impos­ing them. According to the…

A fed­er­al judge has rebuffed an attempt by Arizona to dis­miss a law­suit filed by the state’s death row pris­on­ers chal­leng­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion prac­tices. The state argued at a hear­ing in the case in U.S. District Court on June 29, that the pris­on­ers’ law­suit should be declared moot because Arizona’s sup­ply of mida­zo­lam — the first drug in one of the state’s four exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols — had expired and that the state has been unable to obtain a new sup­ply of…

Six months into 2016, the pace of exe­cu­tions in the United States remains at the same lev­el as the 24-year low set in 2015. Fourteen exe­cu­tions have been car­ried out so far this year in five states — Texas (6), Georgia (5), and one each in Alabama, Florida, and Missouri — while 23 oth­er sched­uled exe­cu­tions have been halt­ed by stays or reprieves. States car­ried out 28…

A new report by Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project has found that a small num­ber of overzeal­ous pros­e­cu­tors with high rates of mis­con­duct have a huge­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact on the death penal­ty in the United States. The report, America’s Top Five Deadliest Prosecutors: How Overzealous Personalities Drive the Death Penalty, shows that, by them­selves, these pros­e­cu­tors are respon­si­ble for more than 440 death sen­tences, the equiv­a­lent of 15% of the entire U.S. death row…

In his new book, Executing Grace, evan­gel­i­cal Christian speak­er, activist, and author Shane Claiborne weaves togeth­er per­son­al nar­ra­tives, the­ol­o­gy, and research to make a Christian case against the death penal­ty. Claiborne says “[t]he death penal­ty did not flour­ish in America in spite of Christians but because of us.” Arguing that “[w]e can’t make death penal­ty his­to­ry until we make death penal­ty per­son­al,” he tells the sto­ries of people…