Publications & Testimony

Brandon Astor Jones (pic­tured), the first per­son Georgia plans to put to death in 2016, is two weeks short of his 73^rd birth­day, has been on death row for 35 years, and shows signs of demen­tia. If his lat­est appeals and his appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy are denied, he will be the old­est per­son Georgia has ever exe­cut­ed. Jones’ case rais­es ques­tions of pro­por­tion­al­i­ty and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty. He and his co-defen­dant Van Solomon — both African American -…

“Ohio’s death penal­ty is plagued by vast inequities” ground­ed in race, gen­der, and geog­ra­phy, accord­ing to a new University of North Carolina study. UNC-Chapel Hill polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor Frank Baumgartner exam­ined the 53 exe­cu­tions Ohio has con­duct­ed since resum­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the 1970s. His study found ​“quite sig­nif­i­cant” racial, gen­der, and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in Ohio’s exe­cu­tions that, Baumgartner said, ​“under­mine pub­lic con­fi­dence in the state’s abil­i­ty to car­ry out the…

In an op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel, for­mer Florida Supreme Court Justice Raoul Cantero (pic­tured) and ABA Death Penalty Assessment Team mem­ber Mark Schlakman call on the Florida leg­is­la­ture to repair the con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tions in Florida’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing scheme. The U.S. Supreme Court found in Hurst v. Florida that the state’s sen­tenc­ing process vio­lates the Sixth Amendment because a jury does not unan­i­mous­ly find the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that jus­ti­fy a death…

A decline in exe­cu­tions is like­ly in Missouri after two years of unusu­al­ly high num­bers. In 2014, Missouri tied with Texas for the most exe­cu­tions in the U.S., and it was sec­ond to Texas in 2015. However, chang­ing atti­tudes about the death penal­ty – sim­i­lar to nation­al shifts – are evi­dent in Missouri’s sen­tenc­ing trends: no one was sen­tenced to death in Missouri in 2014 or 2015, and less than one per­son per year has been sen­tenced to death in the past sev­en years. Moreover, a…

A recent sur­vey of Californians con­duct­ed by The Field Poll found that vot­ers are even­ly split between want­i­ng to speed up the exe­cu­tion process (48%) and sup­port­ing repeal of the death penal­ty and replac­ing it with life with­out parole (47%). Support for repeal has grown since 2014, when the ques­tion was last asked. At that time, 40% favored replac­ing the death penal­ty with life with­out parole and 52% sup­port­ed speed­ing up the process. Californians may face a choice…

Dawn Mancarella, whose moth­er, Joyce Masury, was mur­dered 20 years ago, called the death penal­ty ​“a waste of ener­gy and mon­ey [that] doesn’t bring jus­tice or clo­sure.” Sharing her views on the death penal­ty in a col­umn for Connecticut’s Register Citizen, Mancarella expressed sup­port for the Connecticut Supreme Court’s 2015 deci­sion declar­ing the death penal­ty ​“incom­pat­i­ble with con­tem­po­rary stan­dards of decen­cy in Connecticut.” ​“It’s dis­ap­point­ing to see that the…

In a recent op-ed for The Denver Post, retired cor­rec­tions offi­cer and mil­i­tary vet­er­an Pete Lister offered a cri­tique of the death penal­ty, say­ing it fails as a deter­rent, risks exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple, and costs more than life with­out parole. ​“Capital pun­ish­ment has not, in a sin­gle state, proven to be a deter­rent to cap­i­tal crime.” Lister said. ​“Society con­sists of human beings who make mis­takes. There are those who are, occa­sion­al­ly, neg­li­gent, and some who are even dishonest…

On January 17, 2006, California exe­cut­ed Clarence Ray Allen, who was 76 years old, legal­ly blind, dia­bet­ic, and used a wheel­chair. He was the last per­son the state has exe­cut­ed. A decade lat­er, California’s death row pop­u­la­tion has increased by 100 to 746, mak­ing it the largest in the nation. The state has exe­cut­ed 13 pris­on­ers in 40 years at an esti­mat­ed cost of $4 bil­lion, while more than 100 oth­er pris­on­ers have died on death row.

In an 8 – 1 deci­sion in Kansas v. Carr, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the deci­sions of the Kansas Supreme Court grant­i­ng new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings in three cap­i­tal cas­es, restor­ing the death sen­tences of Jonathan Carr, Reginald Carr, Jr., and Sidney Gleason pend­ing fur­ther appel­late review. The Kansas Supreme Court had vacat­ed the men’s death sen­tences because the jury had not been…