Publications & Testimony

At age 6, Clifford O’Sullivan (pic­tured with his moth­er) tes­ti­fied in favor of a death sen­tence for the man who had killed his moth­er. That man, Mark Scott Thornton, is on California’s death row. Now, 20 years lat­er, O’Sullivan says he believes Thornton’s life should be spared. When he took the wit­ness stand dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing phase of Thornton’s tri­al, O’Sullivan told the jury,​“All I think is that what the bad man did to my mom should hap­pen to him. It’s real­ly sad for my…

Conservative com­men­ta­tor George Will has decribed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in America as​“with­er­ing away.” In his syn­di­cat­ed col­umn in the Washington Post, Will out­lines a con­ser­v­a­tive case against the death penal­ty, high­light­ing Nebraska’s recent leg­isla­tive vote to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Writing that​“exon­er­a­tions of con­demned pris­on­ers and botched exe­cu­tions are dis­may­ing­ly fre­quent,” Will lists three pri­ma­ry reasons why…

Nebraska’s uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture passed a bill to repeal the state’s death penal­ty and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. On May 20, the bill passed its third and final round of debate on a 32 – 15 vote, receiv­ing bipar­ti­san sup­port. Senator Al Davis said,​“There are so many rea­sons why we need to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty in Nebraska. It’s fun­da­men­tal­ly unfair, a ter­ri­ble mis­take and bad jus­tice.” Gov. Pete…

A report of the United Nations Human Rights Council issued on May 15 has urged the United States to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The report, pro­duced as part of the United Nations’ peri­od­ic review of the human rights records of each of its mem­ber nations, iden­ti­fied cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States as a major human rights con­cern. At a hear­ing on the report on May 11, U.S. deputy assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al David Bitkower acknowl­edged that the death…

A recent pub­li­ca­tion from Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation and an op-ed in the Kansas City Star high­light the views of Kansas mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In Voices of Kansas, 13 fam­i­lies that have been affect­ed by mur­der share their expe­ri­ences in the after­math of a loved one’s mur­der and how that shaped their beliefs about the death penal­ty. Neely Goen, whose father, Conroy O’Brien, was killed while…

The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective by Roger Hood and Carolyn Hoyle, now in its Fifth Edition, is​“wide­ly regard­ed as the lead­ing author­i­ty on the death penal­ty in its inter­na­tion­al con­text.” The book explores the move­ment toward world­wide abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, with an empha­sis on inter­na­tion­al human right prin­ci­ples. It dis­cuss­es issues includ­ing arbi­trari­ness, inno­cence, and deter­rence. Paul Craig, Professor of English Law at…

Two recent media reports reveal addi­tion­al details of irreg­u­lar­i­ties in Oklahoma’s admin­is­tra­tion and defense of its lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. A sto­ry in The Atlantic describes in detail the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett and the failed attempts made by a para­medic and a doc­tor to insert the IV into Lockett’s veins. A Buzzfeed report asserts that Oklahoma’s brief to the Supreme Court in the lethal injection case,…

On May 12, the edi­to­r­i­al board of USA Today affirmed its oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty in an edi­to­r­i­al urg­ing that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be sen­tenced to life with­out parole, rather than the death penal­ty, for his role in the Boston marathon bomb­ing.​“Laws aren’t writ­ten for a sin­gle indi­vid­ual, and the death penal­ty applies to many peo­ple,” the edi­to­r­i­al said.​“Tsarnaev and oth­er infa­mous defen­dants … demon­strate the penal­ty’s arbi­trary nature. While…

Two promi­nent Georgians, for­mer Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher (pic­tured, l.), and David J. Burge (pic­tured, r.), the Chairman of Georgia’s 5^th Congressional District Republican Party, have recent­ly voiced their oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. Justice Fletcher vot­ed to uphold numer­ous death sen­tences dur­ing his 15 years on Georgia’s high­est court. Since retir­ing from the Court in 2005, his views have changed.​“With wisdom…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) has crit­i­cized leg­isla­tive efforts to restart North Carolina’s death penal­ty as​“ret­ro­gres­sive” and​“macabre.” The edi­to­r­i­al oppos­es a bill that would allow exe­cu­tions to resume in North Carolina by​“expand­ing the list of med­ical per­son­nel who can mon­i­tor exe­cu­tions.” In 2007, the North Carolina Medical Board said that doc­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in executions violates…