Publications & Testimony

Former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher and for­mer State Corrections Deputy Director Vanessa O’Donnell have joined the effort to spare Kelly Gissendaner, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Georgia on September 29 for recruit­ing Gregory Owen, with whom she was roman­ti­cal­ly involved, to mur­der her hus­band. Owen made a deal with pros­e­cu­tors for a life sen­tence and will be eli­gi­ble for parole in 8 years. Justice Fletcher wrote…

A group of for­mer Georgia pris­on­ers is call­ing for clemen­cy for Kelly Gissendaner, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on September 29. The women say Gissendaner gave them hope and helped them turn their lives around. Nikki Roberts said she spoke to Gissendaner through a heat­ing vent after Roberts had been placed in ​“lock­down” for try­ing to slit her wrists. Gissendaner told her, ​“Don’t wish death on your­self. You sound like you’ve got some sense.” Gissendaner…

In an his­toric address before a joint ses­sion of the United States Congress, Pope Francis called for the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Linking to the broad­er theme of pro­tect­ing human life and dig­ni­ty, he said, ​“This con­vic­tion has led me, from the begin­ning of my min­istry, to advo­cate at dif­fer­ent lev­els for the glob­al abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. I am con­vinced that this way is the best, since every life is sacred, every human per­son is endowed with an inalienable…

Sun Pharma, which is based in India, has pub­licly dis­so­ci­at­ed itself from the use of its drugs in upcom­ing Arkansas exe­cu­tions. The com­pa­ny said it pro­hibits the sale of its prod­ucts to enti­ties that might use them for killing. Sun Pharma was noti­fied of the pos­si­ble mis­use of its prod­ucts by the Associated Press, which had obtained redact­ed pho­tographs of the drugs Arkansas planned to use in eight sched­uled exe­cu­tions. A recent­ly passed secre­cy law allows…

A Reuters analy­sis of more than 2,000 state Supreme Court rul­ings in cap­i­tal cas­es has found that elect­ed judges are much less like­ly to over­turn death sen­tences than judges who are appoint­ed. In the 15 states in which the state Supreme Court is direct­ly elect­ed, jus­tices over­turned death sen­tences only 11% of the time as com­pared to a 26% rever­sal rate in the 7 states in which jus­tices are appoint­ed. 15 states have a hybrid sys­tem, where jus­tices are ini­tial­ly appoint­ed, but must…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will hear argu­ments on September 23 regard­ing Scott Panetti​’s com­pe­ten­cy to be exe­cut­ed. Panetti is a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill man who rep­re­sent­ed him­self at his tri­al wear­ing a cow­boy cos­tume, and attempt­ed to sub­poe­na the Pope, John F. Kennedy, and Jesus Christ. As the court pre­pares to hear Panetti’s case, opin­ion pieces in two Texas news­pa­pers used it to illus­trate larg­er prob­lems with the death penal­ty and…

A ship­ment of sodi­um thiopen­tal, an anes­thet­ic once wide­ly used in exe­cu­tions, was recent­ly stopped in India before it could reach Nebraska. The Indian dis­trib­u­tor sold more than $50,000 worth of sodi­um thiopen­tal to the state in May, but the ship­ment was stopped before leav­ing the coun­try because of ​“improp­er or miss­ing paper­work.” FedEx said it halt­ed the ship­ment because it did not have Food And Drug Administration clear­ance: ​“As with any inter­na­tion­al impor­ta­tion of a…

So far in 2015, no one has been sen­tenced to death in Texas. The death row pop­u­la­tion has dropped to 257, down from 460 at its peak in 1999. In that year, Texas sen­tenced 48 peo­ple to death, the most in any year since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed. Among the rea­sons for the decline in death sen­tences has been the adop­tion of the alter­na­tive sen­tence of life with­out parole (adopt­ed in 2005), and a change in the polit­i­cal cli­mate that had led politi­cians to com­pete in trying…

In his new book, The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities, and in media inter­views accom­pa­ny­ing its release, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer dis­cuss­es the rela­tion­ship between American laws and those of oth­er coun­tries and his dis­sent in Glossip v. Gross, which ques­tioned the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty. In an inter­view with The National Law Journal, Breyer sum­ma­rized the core…

In a sweep­ing look at the cur­rent state of the U.S. death penal­ty, USA Today reporters Richard Wolf and Kevin Johnson high­light sev­er­al recent sto­ry lines that col­lec­tive­ly illus­trate a dra­mat­ic decline in the coun­try’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Their con­clu­sion: ​“The death penal­ty in America may be liv­ing on bor­rowed time.” Wolf and Johnson recount recent cas­es in which high-pro­file crimes result­ed in a life with­out parole sen­tence, in many instances because vic­tims’ families…