Publications & Testimony

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reit­er­at­ed its oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty, even as Missouri pre­pares to exe­cute the man con­vict­ed of killing a for­mer Post-Dispatch reporter. Marcellus Williams is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on January 28 for the mur­der of Lisha Gayle (pic­tured), who left her job as a jour­nal­ist three years before she was killed. The paper not­ed Gayle’s like­ly oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty: ​“It would be sur­pris­ing, in…

Georgia has set an exe­cu­tion date of January 27 for Warren Hill, an inmate diag­nosed with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties (for­mer­ly referred to as ​“men­tal retar­da­tion”). If Hill was con­vict­ed in any oth­er state in the coun­try, he almost cer­tain­ly would be inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. The U.S. Supreme Court banned the exe­cu­tion of peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), but allowed states to set pro­ce­dures for determining…

On January 14, the U.S. Supreme Court (6 – 3) hand­ed down a rul­ing in Jennings v. Stephens, a cap­i­tal case from Texas deal­ing with inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel. The Court held that when a defen­dant wins relief in a low­er fed­er­al court and the state appeals, the defen­dant may offer the­o­ries reject­ed by the low­er court as part of his defense of the relief grant­ed. He does not have to file a new appeal on that reject­ed the­o­ry. In his…

As Oklahoma pre­pared to car­ry out its first exe­cu­tion on January 15 since the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in April 2014, anes­the­si­ol­o­gist Dr. Mark Heath of Columbia University Medical School expressed seri­ous con­cerns about the drugs it will use, par­tic­u­lar­ly one that par­a­lyzes the inmate: ​“Oklahoma and oth­er states … should aban­don the bar­bar­ic use of par­a­lyz­ing drugs entire­ly.” He explained that when the pris­on­er is given…

Speaking from the bench at a hear­ing in a Kentucky cap­i­tal case, Fayette Circuit Judge Pamela Goodwine said, ​“Something needs to be done leg­isla­tive­ly in Kentucky and in every state in the U.S. I think the death penal­ty prob­a­bly should not be a penal­ty, ever.” Despite her per­son­al views, Goodwine ruled that the death penal­ty could be sought against a man accused of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a mur­der, even though he did not shoot the vic­tim. ​“As the law in Kentucky…

A grow­ing body of research into ado­les­cent brain devel­op­ment indi­cates that the brains of even those over the age of 18 con­tin­ue to phys­i­cal­ly change in ways relat­ed to cul­pa­bil­i­ty for crim­i­nal offens­es. The Supreme Court referred to such sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence regard­ing those under the age of 18 when it struck down the death penal­ty for juve­niles in 2005 (Roper v. Simmons) and when it recent­ly lim­it­ed life with­out parole sen­tences for juve­niles. According to Laurence Steinberg…

A Seattle University study exam­in­ing the costs of the death penal­ty in Washington found that each death penal­ty case cost an aver­age of $1 mil­lion more than a sim­i­lar case where the death penal­ty was not sought ($3.07 mil­lion, ver­sus $2.01 mil­lion). Defense costs were about three times as high in death penal­ty cas­es and pros­e­cu­tion costs were as much as four times high­er than for non-death penal­ty cas­es. Criminal Justice Professor Peter Collins, the lead author of the study,…

Capital Punishment: Race, Poverty, & Disadvantage is a free on-line course offered by Yale Law School. The course is taught by Stephen B. Bright, President of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Georgia. According to Yale’s descrip­tion, ​“This course explores the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty in the United States with par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the influ­ence of race and pover­ty, and the dis­ad­van­tages of men­tal ill­ness or intel­lec­tu­al disability…

The Patriot-News in Pennsylvania is run­ning a series of arti­cles exam­in­ing the state’s death penal­ty in antic­i­pa­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive report on the death penal­ty com­mis­sioned by the state leg­is­la­ture. Pennsylvania has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1999, and all three of its exe­cu­tions in the mod­ern era were inmates who waived their appeals. Incoming Governor Tom Wolf has said he may hold off on allow­ing exe­cu­tions until the state addresses…

UPDATE: Brannan was denied clemen­cy by Georgia on Jan.12. Andrew Brannan, a dec­o­rat­ed vet­er­an of the Vietnam War, is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Georgia on January 13. His exe­cu­tion would be the first of 2015. Brannan’s attor­neys are ask­ing the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant clemen­cy because Brannan suf­fers from post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der and bipo­lar dis­or­der. A police video from the crime scene illus­trat­ed Brannan’s errat­ic behav­ior. Joe…