Publications & Testimony

Whether the death penal­ty will be sought in a mur­der may depend more on the bud­get of the coun­ty in which it is com­mit­ted than on the sever­i­ty of the crime, accord­ing to sev­er­al pros­e­cu­tors. A report by the Marshall Project found that the high costs of cap­i­tal cas­es pre­vent some dis­trict attor­neys from seek­ing the death penal­ty. ​“You have to be very respon­si­ble in select­ing where you want to spend your mon­ey,” said Stephen Taylor, a pros­e­cu­tor in Liberty County, Texas. ​“You…

On December 18, DPIC released its annu­al report on the lat­est devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, ​“The Death Penalty in 2014: Year End Report.” In 2014, 35 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed, the fewest in 20 years. Death sen­tences dropped to their low­est lev­el in the mod­ern era of the death penal­ty, with 72 peo­ple sen­tenced to death, the small­est num­ber in 40 years. Just sev­en states car­ried out exe­cu­tions, and three states (Texas, Missouri, and…

In a series of arti­cles ana­lyz­ing Pennsylvania’s death penal­ty, the Reading Eagle found that tax­pay­ers have spent over $350 mil­lion on the death penal­ty over a peri­od in which the state has car­ried out just three exe­cu­tions, all of inmates who dropped their appeals. Using data from a Maryland cost study, which con­clud­ed that death penal­ty cas­es cost $1.9 mil­lion more than sim­i­lar cas­es in which the death penal­ty was not sought, the newspaper…

On December 11 District Judge Darlene Byrne ruled that the source of Texas’ lethal injec­tion drugs is a mat­ter of pub­lic record, and the state should release the infor­ma­tion. Texas has been obtain­ing pen­to­bar­bi­tal from an unnamed com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy. The deci­sion result­ed from a suit filed ear­li­er this year on behalf of death row inmates, two of whom have since been exe­cut­ed. Texas had been open about the source of its exe­cu­tion drugs until May, when Attorney General Greg…

Attorneys for sev­er­al inmates in Oklahoma have asked a fed­er­al court to stay their exe­cu­tions and pre­sent­ed new accounts of the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett (pic­tured) as evi­dence the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el. The recent fil­ing includ­ed state­ments describ­ing the exe­cu­tion from the war­den, an attend­ing para­medic, and a vic­tims’ ser­vices advo­cate who wit­nessed the…

On December 11, an Arizona appeals court dis­missed charges against Debra Jean Milke and barred…

In an op-ed for the Boston Globe, three legal experts, includ­ing retired fed­er­al judge and Harvard Law School pro­fes­sor Nancy Gertner (pic­tured), wrote about the ben­e­fits of allow­ing accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev to plead guilty in exchange for a sen­tence of life with­out parole. If Tsarnaev is con­vict­ed, they write, the penal­ty phase of his cap­i­tal tri­al will put all atten­tion on Tsarnaev’s life and back­ground, rather than on the vic­tims of the bomb­ing. ​“Tsarnaev’s…

A forth­com­ing arti­cle by University of Miami law pro­fes­sor Scott E. Sundby in the William & Mary Bill of Rights jour­nal exam­ines the ​“unre­li­a­bil­i­ty prin­ci­ple” estab­lished by the U.S. Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons. The arti­cle defines the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty prin­ci­ple as, ​“if too great a risk exists that con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed mit­i­ga­tion can­not be prop­er­ly com­pre­hend­ed and account­ed for by the sen­tencer, the unre­li­a­bil­i­ty that is created…

At a hear­ing on December 9, Kwame Ajamu (for­mer­ly Ronnie Bridgeman) was for­mal­ly exon­er­at­ed of the 1975 mur­der for which he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. Ajamu joins his broth­er, Wiley Bridgeman, and co-defen­dant, Ricky Jackson, on DPIC’s Exoneration List, becom­ing the 150^th death row exoneree since 1973. Ajamu, Bridgeman, and Jackson were con­vict­ed based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a 12-year-old boy who recent­ly admit­ted that he nev­er saw the killing. Ajamu’s death sentence…

The U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed a writ of cer­tio­rari in Brumfield v. Cain, a death penal­ty case from Louisiana deal­ing with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Kevan Brumfield was sen­tenced to death pri­or to the Court’s deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), which banned the exe­cu­tion of defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. After that rul­ing, Brumfield filed a claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in state court. The court denied him a hear­ing because the trial…