Publications & Testimony

The North Carolina Supreme Court has reversed the his­toric rul­ings of a Cumberland County, N.C. tri­al court that had over­turned the death sen­tences of four North Carolina death-row pris­on­ers under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Ruling entire­ly on pro­ce­dur­al grounds, the state’s high court expressed no opin­ion on the low­er court’s fact find­ings that North Carolina pros­e­cu­tors had engaged in a decades-long prac­tice of inten­tion­al race dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selection…

Three quar­ters of American exe­cu­tions in 2015 involved cas­es of​“crip­pling dis­abil­i­ties and uncer­tain guilt,” accord­ing to a report by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University. Saying that the 2015 exe­cu­tions revealed​“a bro­ken cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem,” the report found that, “[o]f the 28 peo­ple exe­cut­ed [in 2015], 75% were men­tal­ly impaired or dis­abled, expe­ri­enced extreme child­hood trau­ma or abuse, or were of…

In August 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act, becom­ing the sec­ond state to allow courts to con­sid­er sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence as proof of racial bias in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. As ini­tial­ly writ­ten, the North Carolina law per­mit­ted a judge to over­turn a death sen­tence or pre­vent pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing the death penal­ty in an indi­vid­ual case upon proof of racial bias. Governor Beverly Purdue, who signed the act into law,…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit has ruled in favor of Kevan Brumfield, uphold­ing the deci­sion of a Louisiana fed­er­al dis­trict court that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. Louisiana’s state courts had ini­tial­ly denied Brumfield resources to inves­ti­gate evi­dence of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and then dis­missed his case with­out an evi­den­tiary hear­ing, find­ing that he had not…

On December 16, DPIC released its annu­al report on the lat­est devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,​“The Death Penalty in 2015: Year End Report.” The death penal­ty declined by vir­tu­al­ly every mea­sure in 2015. 28 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed, the fewest since 1991. Death sen­tences dropped 33% from last year’s his­toric low, with 49 peo­ple being sen­tenced to death this year. There have now been few­er death sen­tences imposed in the last decade than in the decade…

Arizona offi­cials have agreed not to sched­ule any exe­cu­tions until a fed­er­al court chal­lenge to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and secre­cy pol­i­cy is resolved. U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake had pre­vi­ous­ly put the law­suit on hold while Arizona rewrote its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. He said the exe­cu­tion hold was nec­es­sary to pre­vent what he called​“cri­sis lit­i­ga­tion” — arti­fi­cial­ly forc­ing the court to decide issues in the 60 days…

South Dakota state Senator Arthur Rusch (R‑Vermillion, pic­tured), a for­mer tri­al court judge who presided over a cap­i­tal tri­al in which a defen­dant was sen­tenced to death, said he will be intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion next year to repeal the state’s death penal­ty. Rusch said he sup­ports repeal because of the emo­tion­al toll of cap­i­tal tri­als on juri­ors and because of the finan­cial impact of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. As a for­mer Lincoln County circuit court…

Recent court deci­sions in cas­es from Georgia and Arkansas reflect con­tin­u­ing judi­cial uncer­tain­ty regard­ing lethal injec­tion secre­cy. On October 12, an Arkansas tri­al court over­turned the state’s exe­cu­tion secre­cy law and ordered the state Department of Corrections to dis­close the drugs that it intends to use in exe­cu­tions and the source of those drugs. In a December 3 opin­ion requir­ing dis­clo­sure by the following…

“[E]lectoral pres­sures influ­ence judges’ deci­sions in cap­i­tal cas­es,” accord­ing to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. That report, How Judicial Elections Impact Criminal Cases, sur­veyed numer­ous empir­i­cal stud­ies that had reviewed the effects of judi­cial elec­tions on out­comes in crim­i­nal cas­es. The vast major­i­ty of crim­i­nal defen­dants — includ­ing cap­i­tal defen­dants — face elect­ed judges at…

Historical trends in exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences close­ly track changes in pub­lic atti­tudes about the death penal­ty and crime in gen­er­al, accord­ing to a com­pre­hen­sive University of North Carolina analy­sis of nation­al pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys on the…