Publications & Testimony

As nation­al exe­cu­tion num­bers drop to his­toric lows and a grow­ing num­ber of states halt exe­cu­tions or repeal the death penal­ty alto­geth­er, Missouri has recent­ly increased the num­ber of exe­cu­tions it is car­ry­ing out and over­tak­en Texas for the high­est per-capi­ta exe­cu­tion rate. Missouri and Texas have car­ried out all of the last 15 exe­cu­tions in the U.S. and 80% of exe­cu­tions through September 1 of this year. A report by The Marshall Project explores why Missouri is…

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory M. Sleet has crit­i­cized the lack of judi­cial review pro­vid­ed by the state and fed­er­al courts pri­or to Delaware​’s 2012 exe­cu­tion of Shannon Johnson, say­ing Johnson’s exe­cu­tion ​“high­lights pro­found fail­ings in our judi­cial process.” In an arti­cle in the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice mag­a­zine, Judge Sleet — who was Chief Judge at the time of the case — called “[t]he Johnson case, and its result,…

In an op-ed for The New York Times, Pulitzer Prize win­ning legal com­men­ta­tor Linda Greenhouse ana­lyzes the sig­nif­i­cance of and inter­play between the recent Connecticut Supreme Court deci­sion strik­ing down the state’s death penal­ty and Justice Stephen Breyer’s dis­sent in the U.S. Supreme Court case Glossip v. Gross. “[T]he Connecticut Supreme Court not only pro­duced an impor­tant deci­sion for its own juris­dic­tion; but it addressed the United…

The Dutch pub­lic employ­ees’ pen­sion fund, Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP (ABP), has divest­ed from the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Mylan after learn­ing that the Virginia Department of Corrections had sup­plies of one of Mylan’s prod­ucts in stock for use in exe­cu­tions. A spokesman for ABP — which with net assets of $416 bil­lion is the world’s third largest pen­sion fund — said, ​“As the Dutch gov­ern­ment and Dutch soci­ety as a whole renounced the death penal­ty a long time ago, we do not want Dutch pension…

On August 31, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard argu­ment in Jones v. Davis, an appeal by California of the 2014 U.S. District Court rul­ing that declared California’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. In 2014, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney held that the decades-long delays caused by California’s fail­ure to pro­vide lawyers for near­ly 350 of its death-row pris­on­ers made its death penal­ty sys­tem uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el and…

A new study by Professor Frank Baumgartner of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Tim Lyman, a Documentation Specialist in New Orleans, reports stark dis­par­i­ties in Louisiana death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions depend­ing upon the race and gen­der of the homi­cide vic­tim. The study — to be pub­lished in the Loyola University of New Orleans Journal of Public Interest Law — finds that defen­dants accused of killing white vic­tims are near­ly twice as like­ly to be sentenced…

A Colorado jury has returned a life sen­tence in the cap­i­tal tri­al of Dexter Lewis in the stab­bing deaths of 5 peo­ple in a Denver bar in 2012. After less than 3 hours of delib­er­a­tion, the jury deter­mined that the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors relat­ing to the killing did not out­weigh Lewis’ mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence detail­ing the exten­sive his­to­ry of abuse and neglect in his upbring­ing, includ­ing chron­ic alco­hol abuse by his moth­er while she was preg­nant and near­ly daily…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reject­ed an appeal in the case of Texas death row inmate Duane Buck, who argued that his tri­al was taint­ed by inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion and racial bias when Buck’s own men­tal health expert tes­ti­fied that he could be a future dan­ger to soci­ety because he is…

The Kansas Federation of College Republicans unan­i­mous­ly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for repeal of the death penal­ty in their state. ​“More young con­ser­v­a­tives like myself rec­og­nize that our bro­ken and fal­li­ble sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in no way match­es up with our con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues,” said Dalton Glasscock, a Wichita State University stu­dent and chair­man of the fed­er­a­tion. Citing pro-life views and fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, the group urged Kansas leg­is­la­tors to repeal the…

In an op-ed for Newsweek, Stanford Law Professor John Donohue argues that there is ​“not the slight­est cred­i­ble sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment reduces the rate of homi­cide” and presents data to show that the death penal­ty is not an effec­tive deter­rent. Comparisons between neigh­bor­ing juris­dic­tions show no effect of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“Whether one com­pares the sim­i­lar move­ments of homi­cide in Canada and the U.S., when only the lat­ter restored the…