Publications & Testimony

Two new stud­ies sug­gest that a defen­dan­t’s facial appear­ance pre­dicts whether he is sen­tenced to life or to death, regard­less of actu­al guilt or inno­cence. A study of Florida inmates pub­lished in the July 15 edi­tion of Psychological Science finds that the per­ceived degree of trust­wor­thi­ness of a defen­dan­t’s face pre­dict­ed which of the two sen­tences a defen­dant who has been con­vict­ed of mur­der ulti­mate­ly received. A fol­low-up study also showed that the link between perceived…

Citing a back­lash from his con­tro­ver­sial state­ments about the death penal­ty, Dale Cox (pic­tured), the Interim District Attorney of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, announced on July 14 that he will not run for District Attorney this…

In two sep­a­rate guest columns for The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), four state leg­is­la­tors urged an end to the death penal­ty in Tennessee. State Representatives Steve McManus (top left) and Mark White (top right), both Republicans, called cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, ​“a lousy return on our invest­ment.” Estimating that Tennessee’s death penal­ty is sim­i­lar in costs to North Carolina’s $11 mil­lion-per-year sys­tem, they list­ed some alter­na­tive uses for death penal­ty funds. ​“270 patrol…

A recent arti­cle in The Economist high­lights con­tin­u­ing long-term inter­na­tion­al trends away from the death penal­ty. Since December, three coun­tries — Fiji, Madagascar, and Suriname — have abol­ished the death penal­ty, increas­ing the num­ber of abo­li­tion­ist coun­tries to above 100. In December, 117 coun­tries vot­ed to sup­port a United Nations res­o­lu­tion for an inter­na­tion­al mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions. The arti­cle notes a few out­lier coun­tries, includ­ing the United States and China, in which…

A major­i­ty of Texas death row pris­on­ers who vol­un­tar­i­ly respond­ed to a recent sur­vey by the Texas Observer report­ed hav­ing expe­ri­enced abuse or oth­er trau­ma as chil­dren. The sur­vey results are con­sis­tent with the find­ings of aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies that have repeat­ed­ly doc­u­ment­ed high rates of child­hood abuse among those sen­tenced to death. The Texas Observer sur­vey found that 22 of the 41 death row pris­on­ers who respond­ed (54%)…

David Keaton, the first man exon­er­at­ed from death row in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty (1973-present), died on July 3 at the age of 63. Keaton was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Florida in 1971 for the mur­der of an off-duty police offi­cer. His con­vic­tion was based on a coerced con­fes­sion and erro­neous eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny. In 1973, the actu­al per­pe­tra­tor was dis­cov­ered because of new evi­dence, and Keaton was exon­er­at­ed. In 2003, Keaton became a…

Highlighting the recent abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in Nebraska and con­cerns about wrong­ful con­vic­tions, National Urban League President Marc H. Morial (pic­tured) called for an end to exe­cu­tions. In an op-ed for The Philadelphia Tribune, Morial cit­ed declin­ing pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty: ​“56 per­cent of Americans sup­port the death penal­ty, this from a high of almost 80 per­cent in the mid-90s,” he said. He also empha­sized the growing…

A fed­er­al judge in Louisiana has delayed five exe­cu­tions until at least July 2016 as state offi­cials strug­gle to deter­mine how to con­duct exe­cu­tions using lethal injec­tion. Christopher Sepulvado, a death row inmate whose exe­cu­tion has been resched­uled sev­er­al times over the last two years, is chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Louisiana’s exe­cu­tion method. The Department of Corrections request­ed that a hear­ing relat­ed to…

Through the lens of a 1927 mur­der and the ensu­ing tri­als of three sus­pects, An Evil Day in Georgia exam­ines the death penal­ty sys­tem in Prohibition-era Georgia. James Hugh Moss, a black man, and Clifford Thompson, a white man, both from Tennessee, were accused of the mur­der of store own­er Coleman Osborn in rur­al north Georgia. Thought to be involved in the ille­gal inter­state trade of alco­hol, they were tried, con­vict­ed, and sen­tenced to death on circumstantial…

In a dis­sent­ing opin­ion in Glossip v. Gross, Justice Stephen Breyer (pic­tured), joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pro­vid­ed a sweep­ing analy­sis of why he believes the death penal­ty in the United States may be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and called for a ​“full brief­ing” on ​“whether the death penal­ty vio­lates the Constitution.” Justice Breyer wrote that ​“Nearly 40 years ago, this Court upheld the death penal­ty under statutes that, in the…