Publications & Testimony

Citing the high cost of death penal­ty appeals and dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing cus­tody of an out-of-state pris­on­er, the Kern County, California District Attorney’s office has agreed to reduce the 1989 death sen­tence imposed upon Clarence Ray (pic­tured) to a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Ray’s lawyers had filed a peti­tion chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of his California con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. The par­ties reached agree­ment that Ray’s death sen­tence would be reversed in…

Philip Holloway, a CNN legal ana­lyst who has been both a pros­e­cu­tor and crim­i­nal defense attor­ney, says in a recent op-ed that ​“it is hard not to ques­tion the ratio­nal­i­ty — indeed the san­i­ty” of the death penal­ty. Holloway says ​“there are sev­er­al prac­ti­cal rea­sons why the death penal­ty just does­n’t make sense any longer, if it ever real­ly did in the first place,” and out­lines five rea­sons why he believes the United States should recon­sid­er cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. First, he says…

On July 23, 2014, Arizona’s exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood was botched, tak­ing near­ly two hours from the time the state began inject­ing him with lethal drugs until he was final­ly pro­nounced dead. Witnesses report­ed that Wood gasped more than 640 times dur­ing the course of the exe­cu­tion, and an offi­cial report lat­er revealed that he was inject­ed with 15 dos­es of the exe­cu­tion drugs. Michael Kiefer, a reporter for the Arizona Republic, who wit­nessed Wood’s exe­cu­tion, described it,…

In a recent arti­cle for the Georgetown Law Journal, Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit calls for sweep­ing reforms in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The for­mer Chief Judge, who was appoint­ed by President Reagan in 1985, out­lined a num­ber of ​“myths” about the legal sys­tem, rais­ing ques­tions about the reli­a­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, fin­ger­print evi­dence, and even DNA evi­dence, which can easily be…

According to Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., a Harvard law pro­fes­sor who taught President Obama and the First Lady when they were law stu­dents, the President may be chang­ing his views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Obama has said that he sup­ports exe­cu­tions for ​“espe­cial­ly hor­rif­ic” mur­ders, but has also raised con­cerns about the death penal­ty. Ogletree said that Obama’s recent focus on racial bias in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, as well as declin­ing pub­lic sup­port for the death penalty,…

A new study by Professor Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds stark racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penalty in…

According to a study by the Women Donors Network, 95% of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors in the U.S. are white and 79% are white men. An analy­sis by DPIC of the study’s data fur­ther shows that, in states that have the death penal­ty, 94.5% of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors are white. In 9 death penal­ty states (Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming), 100% of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors are white. These num­bers reveal that there has been little change…

Two new stud­ies sug­gest that a defen­dan­t’s facial appear­ance pre­dicts whether he is sen­tenced to life or to death, regard­less of actu­al guilt or inno­cence. A study of Florida inmates pub­lished in the July 15 edi­tion of Psychological Science finds that the per­ceived degree of trust­wor­thi­ness of a defen­dan­t’s face pre­dict­ed which of the two sen­tences a defen­dant who has been con­vict­ed of mur­der ulti­mate­ly received. A fol­low-up study also showed that the link between perceived…

Citing a back­lash from his con­tro­ver­sial state­ments about the death penal­ty, Dale Cox (pic­tured), the Interim District Attorney of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, announced on July 14 that he will not run for District Attorney this…

In two sep­a­rate guest columns for The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), four state leg­is­la­tors urged an end to the death penal­ty in Tennessee. State Representatives Steve McManus (top left) and Mark White (top right), both Republicans, called cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, ​“a lousy return on our invest­ment.” Estimating that Tennessee’s death penal­ty is sim­i­lar in costs to North Carolina’s $11 mil­lion-per-year sys­tem, they list­ed some alter­na­tive uses for death penal­ty funds. ​“270 patrol…