Publications & Testimony

Recognizing that ​“a grow­ing num­ber of evan­gel­i­cals now call” for a shift away from the death penal­ty, the National Association of Evangelicals — an umbrel­la group for con­gre­ga­tions rep­re­sent­ing mil­lions of evan­gel­i­cal Christians in the United States — has backed away from its pri­or strong sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. A new­ly adopt­ed NAE res­o­lu­tion states, ​“Evangelical Christians dif­fer in their beliefs about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, often cit­ing strong bib­li­cal and the­o­log­i­cal rea­sons either…

A new study by University of Virginia law pro­fes­sor Brandon Garrett (pic­tured) shows a dra­mat­ic decline in the death penal­ty in Virginia over the last decade. Virginia has car­ried out the third high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions since the 1970s and his­tor­i­cal­ly has exe­cut­ed a high­er per­cent­age of its death-row pris­on­ers than any oth­er state. However, Garrett said there are now few­er than two cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing tri­als per year and Virginia juries have not imposed any new death…

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced on October 19 that the state was post­pon­ing all exe­cu­tions until at least 2017 because it has been unable to obtain the lethal injec­tion drugs nec­es­sary to car­ry them out. Governor John Kasich issued war­rants of reprieve resched­ul­ing the exe­cu­tions of 11 death-row pris­on­ers with exe­cu­tion dates in 2016 and a 12^th with a January 2017 exe­cu­tion date. Ohio resched­uled the exe­cu­tions for dates in 2017 through 2019.

Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton (pic­tured) tes­ti­fied in state leg­isla­tive hear­ings on October 14 that Ohio should ban use of the death penal­ty against defen­dants who suf­fer from seri­ous men­tal ill­ness when they com­mit a cap­i­tal crime. Stratton, a Republican who was appoint­ed to the court in 1996 and served, fol­low­ing reelec­tion, until 2012, called the death penal­ty ​“inef­fi­cient, inef­fec­tive and a great bur­den on our soci­ety.” Stratton said that the…

Support for the death penal­ty in the United States dropped by two per­cent­age points over the last year and oppo­si­tion rose to its high­est lev­els since before the Supreme Court declared exist­ing death penal­ty statutes uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1972, accord­ing to the 2015 annu­al Gallup Poll on the death penal­ty. Gallup reports that 61% of Americans say they favor the death penal­ty, down from 63% last year and near the 40-year low of 60% sup­port record­ed in 2013. Support was 19 points below the 80%…

California has enact­ed a new law giv­ing judges greater author­i­ty to remove indi­vid­ual pros­e­cu­tors — and in some instances entire pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al offices — from cas­es if they will­ful­ly with­hold evi­dence from the defense. Passage of the law was prompt­ed by dis­clo­sure of sys­temic mis­use of jail­house infor­mants by Orange County pros­e­cuters, which led Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals (pic­tured) to bar the entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office from par­tic­i­pa­tion in a…

A group of death row exonerees, includ­ing Kwame Ajamu (pic­tured), held a press con­fer­ence in Cleveland on October 9 in which they called for the end of the death penal­ty. Ajamu — the nation’s 150^th death-row exoneree — was freed from Ohio​’s death row in 2014 along with his broth­er, Wiley Bridgeman, and anoth­er man, Ricky Jackson. The three had been con­vict­ed 39 years ear­li­er on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a 12-year-old…

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment on October 13 in Hurst v. Florida, a case chal­leng­ing pro­vi­sions in Florida​’s death penal­ty statute that do not require jurors to unan­i­mous­ly agree to the facts that could sub­ject a defen­dant to a death sen­tence or to reach una­nim­i­ty before rec­om­mend­ing that the judge sen­tence a defen­dant to death. Florida is one of just three states that does not require a unan­i­mous jury ver­dict when sen­tenc­ing some­one to…

In an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for­mer cor­rec­tions offi­cial David Rose crit­i­cizes the arbi­trari­ness and dehu­man­iz­ing nature of the death penal­ty. Rose, who spent 30 years work­ing in cor­rec­tions in Pennsylvania, Florida, and New Jersey, said, ​“I don’t think the pub­lic real­izes the impact that exe­cu­tions have on the pub­lic ser­vants who are tasked with car­ry­ing them out.” Rose draws on his own expe­ri­ences and those of his col­leagues to describe the toll that capital…

“Over time lethal injec­tion has become only more prob­lem­at­ic and chaot­ic,” Deborah W. Denno, a pro­fes­sor at Fordham Law School, told the New York Times, sum­ma­riz­ing the ongo­ing bat­tles that have led states to adopt new drug sources or alter­na­tive meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. Several states have obtained or sought drugs using sources that may vio­late phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal reg­u­la­tions. For the exe­cu­tion of Alfredo Prieto, Virginia obtained pen­to­bar­bi­tal from the…