Publications & Testimony

Pennsylvania’s tax­pay­ers have paid an esti­mat­ed $272 mil­lion per exe­cu­tion since the Commonwealth rein­stat­ed its death penal­ty in 1978, accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion by The Reading Eagle. Using data from a 2008 study by the Urban Institute, the Eagle cal­cu­lat­ed that cost of sen­tenc­ing 408 peo­ple to death was an esti­mat­ed $816 mil­lion high­er than the cost of life with­out parole. The esti­mate is con­ser­v­a­tive, the paper says, because it assumes only one cap­i­tal tri­al for each…

The U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed writs of cer­tio­rari in three jury dis­crim­i­na­tion cas­es on June 20, vacat­ing each of them and direct­ing state courts in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana to recon­sid­er the issue in light of the Court’s recent deci­sion in Foster v. Chatman. Two of the peti­tion­ers, Curtis Flowers of Mississippi and Christopher Floyd of Alabama, are cur­rent­ly on death row. The third, Jabari Williams, was con­vict­ed in Louisiana of second-degree murder.

Sharon Risher, whose moth­er, Ethel Lance (pic­tured), and cousins, Susie Jackson and Tywanza Sanders, were killed in the racial­ly-moti­vat­ed shoot­ing at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church one year ago, says she has not for­giv­en Dylann Roof, the accused per­pe­tra­tor, but does not think he should be sen­tenced to death. In an arti­cle for Vox, Risher shared her expe­ri­ences since the shoot­ing, dis­cussing her emo­tion­al reac­tions to her moth­er’s death and her views on gun con­trol, the removal of…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion to Robert Roberson (pic­tured), who had been sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on June 21 for the 2003 death of his two-and-a-half-year-old daugh­ter, Nikki Curtis. The court’s June 16 stay order halts Roberson’s exe­cu­tion under a recent Texas law per­mit­ting court chal­lenges based on new sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence of inno­cence. Prosecution experts had tes­ti­fied at Roberson’s tri­al that his daugh­ter died of…

The Delaware Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on June 15 in Rauf v. State, a case chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s death sen­tenc­ing statute on the grounds that it vio­lates the Sixth Amendment right to tri­al by jury. The chal­lenge arose in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion in January 2016 in Hurst v. Florida, which struck down Florida’s sen­tenc­ing scheme, say­ing that “[t]he Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a…

On June 13, 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court decid­ed Miranda v. Arizona, grant­i­ng sus­pects crit­i­cal con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions designed to com­bat abu­sive police inter­ro­ga­tion prac­tices. In com­men­tary for The Marshall Project, Samuel Gross (pic­tured) and Maurice Possley of the National Registry of Exonerations dis­cuss the inter­play between false con­fes­sions, the death penal­ty, and wrong­ful con­vic­tions and describe how Miranda​’s famous rights to remain…

A recent poll con­duct­ed by the University of South Carolina reveals deep racial divi­sions in the state over the death penal­ty and over the appro­pri­ate­ness of apply­ing it in the case of Dylann Roof, the white defen­dant who faces state and fed­er­al cap­i­tal charges in the race-based killings of nine black mem­bers of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. According to the poll, 64.9% of African Americans in South Carolina oppose the death penal­ty, while 69.4% of white…

Saying that he has a per­ma­nent con­di­tion that makes him too men­tal­ly ill to exe­cute, the office of California Attorney General Kamala Harris (pic­tured) recent­ly asked the California Supreme Court to remove Ronnie McPeters from California’s death row and resen­tence him to life without…

A sec­ond Florida tri­al court has ruled that the state’s new death penal­ty statute is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. On June 9, Hillsborough County Judge Samantha Ward barred pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing death against Michael Edward Keetley, say­ing that the state’s death penal­ty statute vio­lat­ed the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Judge Ward said that the Florida leg­is­la­ture’s changes to the sen­tenc­ing law after the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the old statute unconstitutional in…

On June 9, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Williams v. Pennsylvania that Terry Williams’ (pic­tured) due process rights were vio­lat­ed when Pennsylvania’s Chief Justice refused to recuse him­self from the case. Ronald Castille served as Philadelphia District Attorney before being elect­ed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. As District Attorney, he per­son­al­ly approved the deci­sion to pur­sue the death penal­ty against the 18-year-old Williams, and then,…