Publications & Testimony

(Click image to enlarge) Polls released this week by Pew Research Center and CBS News show that pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty has declined to near his­toric lows. Both polls report­ed that 56% of Americans sup­port the death penal­ty. That is the low­est lev­el of sup­port ever record­ed by the CBS News poll, and near the low­est lev­el report­ed by Pew in the last 40 years. The Pew poll exam­ined lev­els of sup­port by polit­i­cal par­ty and found that the decline in sup­port for the death…

On April 10, the Tennessee Supreme Court can­celed the exe­cu­tion dates for all four Tennessee death-row inmates cur­rent­ly under death war­rant, and returned their cas­es to the low­er courts to address the inmates’ chal­lenges to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. The exe­cu­tions had been sched­uled for October 2015 through March 2016. Tennessee has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2009, but the state announced in 2013 that it would switch from a three-drug lethal injection…

UPDATE: ​“Family mem­bers of two Massachusetts mur­der vic­tims, includ­ing the police offi­cer who was killed by the Tsarnaevs, have spo­ken out con­cern­ing their views on the sen­tence they believe should be imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing. Now Bill and Denise Richards, par­ents of 8‑year-old Martin Richards, the youngest vic­tim killed in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing, have added their voic­es and called on fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to drop the…

In an edi­to­r­i­al on April 13, the New York Times described the death penal­ty as ​“cru­el, immoral, and inef­fec­tive at reduc­ing crime” and called it ​“so rid­dled with error that no civ­i­lized nation should tol­er­ate its use.” The Times described how pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and an ​“all-too-com­mon mind-set to win at all costs” played a sub­stan­tial role in the con­vic­tions of many of the 152 inno­cent men and women who have been…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA, which reports state-by-state infor­ma­tion on death rows across the coun­try, reflects a more than 12% decline in the size of death row nation­wide. The Winter 2015 edi­tion reports that 3,019 inmates were on America’s death rows as of December 31, 2014, down 12.6% from the 3,455 men and women report­ed ten years ear­li­er. The racial demo­graph­ics of death row are now 43% white, 42% black,…

During his tenure as Attorney General of Virginia from 1998 to 2001, that state exe­cut­ed 36 peo­ple. Now Mark Earley oppos­es the death penal­ty. The for­mer Attorney General recent­ly dis­cussed his change of opin­ion in an arti­cle for the University of Richmond Law Review. He wrote, ​“If you believe that the gov­ern­ment always ​‘gets it right,’ nev­er makes seri­ous mis­takes, and is nev­er taint­ed with cor­rup­tion, then you can be com­fort­able supporting…

Two recent reports from Ohio high­light­ed the decline in the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in that state. On March 30, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office released its annu­al report on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The Attorney General’s report not­ed three new death sen­tences, one com­mu­ta­tion, and one exe­cu­tion in Ohio in 2014, down from the state’s peak of 17 death sen­tences in both 1995 and 1996. It also report­ed that Ohio juries have imposed four or few­er death sen­tences in each of the…

Attorneys for Texas death row inmate Max Soffar, who is dying of liv­er can­cer, con­tin­ue to seek a rever­sal of his case, even though judi­cial action — if it comes — may be too late. Soffar main­tains his inno­cence in the 1980 mur­ders of three peo­ple dur­ing a bowl­ing alley rob­bery. The sole evi­dence against Soffar is a con­fes­sion he signed after three days of unrecord­ed inter­ro­ga­tion that is incon­sis­tent with the facts of the case and, he main­tains, is false.

Of the 12 death sen­tences hand­ed down in Louisiana in the last 5 years, 8 have come from Caddo Parish. Caddo is also among the 2% of U.S. coun­ties respon­si­ble for 56% of peo­ple on death row. With a pop­u­la­tion of just 257,000, Caddo Parish has sent 16 peo­ple to death row, the sec­ond high­est of any parish in Louisiana. Two pros­e­cu­tors, one of whom is under inves­ti­ga­tion for pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, are respon­si­ble for 6 of the recent death sen­tences. Hugo Holland, who handled…

California’s death row — the largest in the coun­try — is expand­ing beyond the capac­i­ty of San Quentin State Prison to hold it. In response, Governor Jerry Brown has pro­posed a $3.2 mil­lion expen­di­ture to make about 100 new cells avail­able to incar­cer­ate death row inmates. California has not exe­cut­ed any death-row pris­on­er since 2006. Court rul­ings have barred the state from using its lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and, last July, in the case of…