Publications & Testimony

United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Court’s most ardent defend­ers of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, has died at age 79. Appointed to the Court in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, Justice Scalia vot­ed to uphold the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in a wide vari­ety of cir­cum­stances. He was part of 5 – 4 con­ser­v­a­tive majori­ties in a num­ber of sig­nif­i­cant death penal­ty cas­es, includ­ing the 1987…

U.S. District Court Judge Geoffrey Crawford has ordered an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on Donald Fell​’s (pic­tured) chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In court fil­ings seek­ing to bar fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing death against him in a pend­ing retri­al, Fell has argued that the fed­er­al death penal­ty con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Among…

Duane Buck, who was sen­tenced to death after a defense expert wit­ness tes­ti­fied that Buck could pose a future dan­ger to soci­ety because he is black, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant him a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing because of his lawyer’s inef­fec­tive­ness. Buck is one of six defen­dants whose Texas cap­i­tal tri­als were iden­ti­fied by a Texas Attorney General’s report as hav­ing been taint­ed by race-based testimony by…

The dis­ci­pli­nary board of the Texas State Bar reject­ed an appeal on February 9 from Charles Sebesta, the pros­e­cu­tor whose mis­con­duct led to the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Anthony Graves (pic­tured, r.). The board­’s deci­sion dis­bar­ring Sebesta for what it called​“egre­gious” mis­con­duct is now final. Anthony Graves was con­vict­ed in 1994 on the false tes­ti­mo­ny of Robert Carter, who claimed Graves was his accom­plice. Graves was exonerated…

Judiciary Committee, Colorado Senate: Testimony on SB 64 — Non-unan­i­­mous Juries in Capital Sentencing by Richard C. Dieter, Senior Program Director, Death Penalty Information Center (February…

In the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion strik­ing down Florida​’s death-sen­­tenc­ing pro­ce­dures, a new poll shows that near­ly two thirds of Floridians now pre­fer some form of life sen­tence to the death penal­ty and near­ly three-quar­ters favor requir­ing the jury to unan­i­mous­ly agree on the sen­tence before the death penal­ty can be imposed. The poll by Public Policy Polling found that 62% of respon­dents pre­ferred some form of life in prison over the death…

In her new book, Confronting the Death Penalty: How Language Influences Jurors in Capital Cases, Marshall University Anthropology Professor Robin Conley exam­ines​“how lan­guage fil­ters, restricts, and at times is used to manip­u­late jurors’ expe­ri­ences while they serve on cap­i­tal tri­als and again when they reflect on them after­ward.” Conley spent fif­teen months in ethno­graph­ic field­work observ­ing four Texas cap­i­tal tri­als and interviewing the…

As California’s new lethal injec­tion pro­to­col moves the state towards resum­ing exe­cu­tions, Kevin Cooper (pic­tured, left) is seek­ing clemen­cy from Gov. Jerry Brown on the grounds that he is inno­cent. Cooper — one of 18 death-row pris­on­ers who have exhaust­ed their court appeals and face exe­cu­tion — was sen­tenced to death for the 1983 mur­ders of a mar­ried cou­ple, their 10-year-old daugh­ter, and the daugh­ter’s 11-year-old friend. However, evi­dence that was suppressed as…

Capital cas­es are on hold in Florida and Delaware as their state courts con­sid­er the impact of the recent U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing in Hurst v. Florida. The Hurst deci­sion ruled that Florida’s sen­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because a judge, rather than a jury, deter­mined the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that made a case eli­gi­ble for a death sen­tence. The Florida Supreme Court has already delayed one…

A report released on February 3 by the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) report­ed that a record 149 defen­dants were exon­er­at­ed in 2015, includ­ing 58 con­vict­ed of homi­cide, also a record for exon­er­a­tions in a sin­gle year. Overall, 39% of last year’s exon­er­a­tions were in homi­cide cas­es. Using slight­ly dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria than DPIC’s exon­er­a­tion list, the NRE report­ed five exon­er­a­tions of defen­dants who had been…