Publications & Testimony

Prisoners sen­tenced to death in the small num­ber of U.S. coun­ties that most aggres­sive­ly pur­sue the death penal­ty often suf­fer the ​“dou­ble wham­my” of get­ting ​“both the dead­liest pros­e­cu­tors in America and some of the country’s worst cap­i­tal defense lawyers,” accord­ing to an arti­cle in Slate by Robert L. Smith. In review­ing the the unusu­al­ly high num­bers of death ver­dicts from 3 coun­ties that are near the top of the nation in dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly pro­duc­ing death sen­tences over the last…

Ernest Johnson (pic­tured) is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Missouri on November 3, despite strong evi­dence that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for…

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment in Foster v. Chatman on November 2. Timothy Foster, an intel­lec­tu­al­ly lim­it­ed black teenag­er charged with killing an elder­ly white woman, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1987 by an all-white jury after Georgia pros­e­cu­tors struck every black mem­ber of the jury pool. Foster argued that pros­e­cu­tors imper­mis­si­bly exer­cised their strikes on the basis of race, in vio­la­tion of the Court’s 1986 deci­sion in…

The U.S. Department of Justice released its annu­al FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2014, report­ing no change in the nation­al mur­der rate since 2013. In the Northeast, the region with the fewest exe­cu­tions, the mur­der rate declined 5.7%, from 3.5 to 3.3 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion. The mur­der rate was 1.7 times high­er in the South, which car­ries out the most exe­cu­tions of any region. That region saw a 3.4% increase in the homi­cide rate, and its 5.5 murders…

Capital pun­ish­ment is dom­i­nat­ing the dis­cus­sion in the runoff elec­tion between James E. Stewart, Sr. and Dhu Thompson to suc­ceed act­ing Caddo Parish, Louisiana District Attorney Dale Cox. Cox’s con­tro­ver­sial state­ments about the death penal­ty — includ­ing that the state needs to ​“kill more peo­ple” — have focused nation­al atten­tion on the parish, which ranks among the two per­cent of U.S. coun­ties respon­si­ble for 56 per­cent of the inmates on death row…

15.1% of cap­i­tal defen­dants sen­tenced to death in Pennsylvania since 1980 were rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by a lawyer who has been dis­ci­plined for pro­fes­sion­al mis­con­duct, and that has risen to 18.2% in the past decade, accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive report by The Reading Eagle. These rates of dis­ci­pline were between 5 and 6 times high­er than the 3% dis­ci­pli­nary rate for Pennsylvania lawyers as a whole over the past 30 years. The dis­ci­pli­nary issues have disproportionately…

UPDATE: On May 23, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned Timothy Foster’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence because Georgia pros­e­cu­tors improp­er­ly exer­cised their dis­cre­tionary jury strikes on the basis of race to exclude African American jurors. The vote was 7 – 1, with Justice Thomas the lone dis­senter. For more on the deci­sion, read DPIC’s summary…

Derrick Jamison was exon­er­at­ed from death row in Ohio on October 25, 2005, 20 years to the day after he was sen­tenced to death in Hamilton County (Cincinnati). On the 30^th anniver­sary of his sen­tenc­ing and the 10^th anniver­sary of his release, a Salon pro­file describes the work Jamison now does to edu­cate peo­ple about the risks of wrongful…

In an inter­view with Bill Keller of The Marshall Project, President Obama said the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty is ​“deeply trou­bling,” and ques­tioned the man­ner in which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is applied in the United States. While the President said that he is not opposed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“in the­o­ry,” he expressed con­cern about issues includ­ing racial bias, wrong­ful con­vic­tions, and botched exe­cu­tions. ​“We know, sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, that there’s a racial bias that…

Arizona and Texas attempt­ed to import lethal injec­tion drugs in vio­la­tion of fed­er­al law, but the ship­ments were halt­ed by U.S. Food and Drug Administration offi­cials in late July, accord­ing to reports by The Arizona Republic and Buzzfeed. The Republic reports that the Arizona Department of Corrections paid $27,000 for sodi­um thiopen­tal for use in exe­cu­tions, but the ship­ment was halt­ed at the Phoenix air­port by U.S. Food and Drug…