Publications & Testimony

A report by University of Virginia Law Professor Brandon L. Garrett describes the effects of false con­fes­sions in cas­es in which DNA evi­dence lat­er led to an exon­er­a­tion. Garrett reports that half of the 20 death row inmates who were exon­er­at­ed by DNA test­ing had false­ly con­fessed to the crime. He uses the recent exon­er­a­tions of intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled defen­dants Leon Brown and Henry McCollum in North Carolina to illus­trate the prob­lem: ​“The police claimed that Brown and…

On August 7, a jury in Aurora, Colorado, sen­tenced James Holmes to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole for the 2012 movie the­ater shoot­ing that killed 12 peo­ple and injured dozens more. The jury said they could not reach a unan­i­mous deci­sion on Holmes’ sen­tence, an out­come that results in a sen­tence of life without…

On August 6, 1890, New York exe­cut­ed William Kemmler. It was the first time ever a state used the elec­tric chair to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion. Proponents of elec­tro­cu­tion — includ­ing Thomas Edison — tout­ed the new method as quick, effec­tive, pain­less, and humane: the same argu­ments lat­er used by leg­is­la­tors to sup­port lethal injec­tion and exe­cu­tion by nitro­gen gas. In May 1890, the U.S. Supreme Court reject­ed Kemmler’s challenge…

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The American Bar Association has released a new pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2015, exam­in­ing major issues, trends, and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The chap­ter devot­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was writ­ten by Ronald Tabak, an attor­ney at Skadden Arps and board mem­ber of the Death Penalty Information Center. Tabak presents evi­dence of the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty in death sen­tences and executions,…

A new study to be pub­lished in the University of Denver Law Review shows that whether pros­e­cu­tors seek the death penal­ty in Colorado ​“depends to an alarm­ing extent on the race and geo­graph­ic loca­tion of the defen­dant.” The study — based upon 10 years of data col­lect­ed by attor­ney Meg Beardsley and University of Denver law pro­fes­sors Sam Kamin and Justin Marceau and soci­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Scott Phillips — shows…

Former Texas pros­e­cu­tor, Tim Cole — described by the Dallas Morning News as ​“a no-holds-barred law­man” in 4 terms as District Attorney for Archer, Clay, and Montague coun­ties — now says that ​“Texas should join the 19 U.S. states where the death penal­ty has been abol­ished.” In an op-ed in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Cole says Texas’ dra­mat­ic decline in impos­ing the death penal­ty, from a record 49 death sen­tences in 1994 and 48 in 1999 to…

On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court held (5 – 4) that Oklahoma inmates ​“failed to estab­lish a like­li­hood of suc­cess on the mer­its of their claim that the use of mida­zo­lam vio­lates the Eighth Amendment.” Three inmates on Oklahoma’s death row had chal­lenged the state’s use of mida­zo­lam as the first drug in a three-drug pro­to­col, say­ing that it ​“fails to ren­der a per­son insen­sate to pain.” In a nar­row deci­sion writ­ten by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court deferred to…

In an inter­view at Duke Law School, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflect­ed on the past term at the U.S. Supreme Court. She dis­cussed sev­er­al land­mark cas­es from the past year, includ­ing Glossip v. Gross, in which she joined Justice Stephen Breyer in a dis­sent that ques­tioned the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty. Ginsburg said she had wait­ed to take such a stance on the death penal­ty because past jus­tices, ​“took them­selves out of…