Publications & Testimony

In light of the three botched exe­cu­tions that took place in 2014, the Washington Post pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al urg­ing states not to drop ​“a veil of secre­cy over exe­cu­tions.” In par­tic­u­lar, the edi­to­r­i­al board oppos­es a pro­posed law in Virginia, which, ​“would make prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing about exe­cu­tions in Virginia a state secret — even the build­ing in which they take place. ” ​“It’s hard to see the com­pelling need for that kind of bla­tant censorship,…

Seattle’s Mayor Ed Murray, all 9 mem­bers of the Seattle City Council, and City Attorney Pete Holmes signed a let­ter in sup­port of a bi-par­ti­san bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty in Washington. Tim Burgess (l.), the President of the City Council, is a for­mer police offi­cer and detec­tive. The joint let­ter said: ​“There is no cred­i­ble evi­dence show­ing that the death penal­ty deters homi­cide or makes our com­mu­ni­ties safer. Instead, pur­su­ing cap­i­tal punishment…

According to a new study prin­ci­pal­ly authored by Prof. Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina, the death penal­ty is far more like­ly to be used if the under­ly­ing mur­der vic­tim was white rather than black. The study exam­ined every U.S. exe­cu­tion from 1976 – 2013 and found, ​“The sin­gle most reli­able pre­dic­tor of whether a defen­dant in the United States will be exe­cut­ed is the race of the vic­tim.… Capital pun­ish­ment is very rarely used where the vic­tim is a Black male, despite the…

In a dis­cus­sion at the University of Florida Law School, for­mer U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said that recent research reveals that Texas almost cer­tain­ly exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man in…

The U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia (2002) banned the exe­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties (men­tal retar­da­tion), but allowed each state to set guide­lines for deter­min­ing whether an inmate has such a con­di­tion. In Georgia, cap­i­tal defen­dants are required to prove ​“men­tal retar­da­tion” beyond a rea­son­able doubt. It is the only state in the coun­try that sets such a high bur­den of proof for such claims. Warren Hill had a strong claim of intel­lec­tu­al disability.

On January 23 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a chal­lenge to Oklahoma’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures, par­tic­u­lar­ly its use of mida­zo­lam that was used in three botched exe­cu­tions in 2014. Four Oklahoma inmates asked the Court to review the state’s pro­ce­dures, but one of them, Charles Warner, was exe­cut­ed before the Court agreed to take the case. It is like­ly the oth­er three defen­dants will be grant­ed stays. When Warner was executed,…

UPDATE: (1/​27). Ladd was denied a stay by the TX Ct. of Crim. Appeals. Robert Ladd is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on January 29, despite hav­ing an IQ of 67, an indi­ca­tion of intel­lec­tial dis­abil­i­ty ren­der­ing him inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. Howver, Texas courts reject­ed Ladd’s pre­vi­ous appeal because the state has a unique way of eval­u­at­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Courts in Texas often con­sid­er what is called the ​“Briseño…

According to a recent arti­cle in the New Yorker, it has been dif­fcult select­ing a jury for the tri­al of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of the Boston Marathon bomb­ing. Many of the 1,350 peo­ple who filled out a juror ques­tion­naire have been elim­i­nat­ed from ser­vice based on their writ­ten answers. But even of those who remain, only a few have been found suf­fi­cient­ly impar­tial regard­ing Tsarnaev’s guilt or inno­cence and on poten­tial sen­tences, putting the selection…

On January 20 the U.S. Supreme Court (7 – 2) grant­ed Missouri death row inmate Mark Christeson new attor­neys to assist him in pur­su­ing his fed­er­al appeal. Christeson’s appoint­ed attor­neys missed a cru­cial fil­ing dead­line for his fed­er­al appeal, not even meet­ing with him until a month after the dead­line. New attor­neys offered to rep­re­sent Christeson, argu­ing that his cur­rent attor­neys had a con­flict of inter­est, since advo­cat­ing for him would…