Publications & Testimony

Dr. Jay Chapman, the Oklahoma med­ical exam­in­er who cre­at­ed the three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col that was used from 1982 to 2010, recent­ly told The Guardian that he has doubts about the death penalty.“I am ambiva­lent about the death penal­ty – there have been so many inci­dents of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, or DNA test­ing that has proved a prisoner’s inno­cence. It’s prob­lem­at­ic,” Chapman said. He said he believed lethal injec­tion would be a more humane method of exe­cu­tion, ​“At that…

In an arti­cle for the University of Richmond Law Review, Stephen Bright (pic­tured), President and Senior Counsel at the Southern Center for Human Rights, describes the arbi­trary fac­tors that con­tin­ue to influ­ence the death penal­ty. Bright first describes the his­tor­i­cal con­text that led the Supreme Court to strike down the death penal­ty in 1976. He draws com­par­isons between lynch­ings, which he says were ​“used to main­tain racial con­trol after the Civil War,” and capital…

On April 29, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment in Glossip v. Gross, a case chal­leng­ing the use of mida­zo­lam in lethal injec­tions. Midazolam was used as the first drug in three botched exe­cu­tions in 2014, includ­ing the exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma exact­ly one year ago. Prisoners on Oklahoma’s death row argued that mida­zo­lam should not be used in exe­cu­tions because it could not reli­ably anes­the­size the pris­on­er to pre­vent him or…

In a case spot­light­ing issues of men­tal ill­ness and the death penal­ty, the Florida Supreme Court on April 23 unan­i­mous­ly over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on a severe­ly men­tal­ly ill death-row inmate, Humberto Delgado (pic­tured). Delgado, who was con­vict­ed of killing a Tampa police offi­cer, will be resen­tenced to life with­out parole. The court said, ​“We do not down­play the fact that Corporal Roberts lost his life as a result of Delgado’s actions. However ……

Nebraska’s uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture recent­ly vot­ed 30 – 13 in favor of repeal­ing the State’s death penal­ty, advanc­ing the bill to a sec­ond round of leg­isla­tive review. (In Nebraska, a bill must pass three times before it is sent to the Governor.) A major­i­ty (17 out of 30) of Republican leg­is­la­tors vot­ed in favor of the bill, which was also sup­port­ed by 12 Democrats and one Independent leg­is­la­tor. Sen. Colby Coash (R‑Lincoln), said, ​“If any oth­er sys­tem in our gov­ern­ment was as inef­fec­tive and…

Four retired death-row prison offi­cials — two war­dens, a chap­lain, and an exe­cu­tion super­vi­sor — recent­ly described the effect that car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions has had on…

In a recent op-ed in The Hill, three lead­ing phar­ma­cists wrote in sup­port of the res­o­lu­tion by the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), dis­cour­ag­ing phar­ma­cist par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions. Leonard Edloe, for­mer CEO of Edloe’s Professional Pharmacies, William Fassett (pic­tured), pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of phar­ma­col­o­gy at Washington State University, and Philip Hantsen, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the…

(Click image to enlarge) The Atlantic reports that death sen­tences are heav­i­ly con­cen­trat­ed in a small num­ber of heavy-use coun­ties. According to DePaul University law pro­fes­sor Robert J. Smith, ​“1 per­cent of coun­ties accounts for rough­ly 44 per­cent of all death sen­tences” since the rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty in 1976. Death-sen­tenc­ing rates in those coun­ties are not a prod­uct of their pop­u­la­tion or mur­der rates, Smith points out. For exam­ple, from 2004 to 2009, ​“Miami-Dade…

(Click here to enlarge image). According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, Pennsylvania is less like­ly to exe­cute a death row inmate than any oth­er state that has car­ried out any exe­cu­tions. A Reading Eagle analy­sis of BJS data from 1973 through 2013 shows that the Commonwealth has exe­cut­ed few­er than 1% of all death-sen­tenced defen­dants since 1973, with exe­cu­tion the least like­ly of 5 pos­si­ble out­comes for peo­ple sen­tenced to…

(Click on image to enlarge). The Federal Bureau of Investigation has for­mal­ly acknowl­edged that exam­in­ers from the FBI Laboratory’s micro­scop­ic hair com­par­i­son unit for decades pro­vid­ed flawed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny pur­port­ed­ly match­ing crime scene hair evi­dence to the hair of defen­dants charged with those crimes. As part of an ongo­ing review of inac­cu­rate foren­sic evi­dence, the FBI admit­ted that, in the 268 tri­als exam­ined so far, its foren­sic experts sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly overstated…