Publications & Testimony

In her first press con­fer­ence since tak­ing office on February 18, Oregon Governor Kate Brown said she will con­tin­ue the mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions that for­mer Governor John Kitzhaber imposed in 2011.​“There needs to be a broad­er dis­cus­sion about fix­ing the sys­tem,” Brown said.​“Until that dis­cus­sion, I will be uphold­ing the mora­to­ri­um imposed by Gov. Kitzhaber.” When the for­mer gov­er­nor announced the mora­to­ri­um, he also called for…

On February 18, the Montana House Judiciary Committee vot­ed (11 – 10) to advance HB 370, a bill to replace the death penal­ty with a max­i­mum sen­tence of life with­out parole. The same com­mit­tee had reject­ed sim­i­lar bills sev­er­al times in recent years. The bill will now move to the full House. Republican bill spon­sor Rep. David Moore (pic­tured) said he thought the bill had a decent chance of pass­ing in the House. Rep. Clayton Fiscus, one of two Republican…

Jeanne Bishop has writ­ten a new book about her life and spir­i­tu­al jour­ney after her sis­ter was mur­dered in Illinois in 1990. Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer tells Bishop’s per­son­al sto­ry of grief, loss, and of her even­tu­al efforts to con­front and rec­on­cile with her sis­ter’s killer. She also address­es larg­er issues of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, life sen­tences for juve­nile offend­ers, and restorative justice.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder rec­om­mend­ed that all exe­cu­tions be put on hold while the Supreme Court is con­sid­er­ing Glossip v. Gross, a case involv­ing Oklahoma​’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure. Speaking for him­self, rather than the admin­is­tra­tion, at a press lun­cheon on February 17, Holder said,​“I think a mora­to­ri­um until the Supreme Court makes that deci­sion would be appro­pri­ate.” Holder has previously…

Attorneys for Rodney Reed, a death row inmate in Texas, have filed a peti­tion in a coun­ty court with new evi­dence sup­port­ing an alter­nate the­o­ry of the crime that led to Reed’s con­vic­tion. Reed is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on March 5 for the murder…

A recent arti­cle by Prof. Eric Berger of the University of Nebraska College of Law argued that defen­dants fac­ing exe­cu­tion have a fun­da­men­tal right to know impor­tant infor­ma­tion about the lethal injec­tion drugs they will be giv­en. Berger wrote,​“Judicial recog­ni­tion of this due process right would both pro­tect Eighth Amendment val­ues and also encour­age states to make their exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures more trans­par­ent and less dangerous.”…

On February 13, 2015 Governor Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania announced a mora­to­ri­um on all exe­cu­tions in the state. He said no exe­cu­tions will take place at least until he has​“received and reviewed the forth­com­ing report of the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Commission on Capital Punishment, estab­lished under Senate Resolution 6 of 2011, and there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to address all concerns satisfactorily.”…

A new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) of Alabama has doc­u­ment­ed more lynch­ings in American his­to­ry than pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, par­tic­u­lar­ly of African Americans in the South, and has drawn par­al­lels between this prac­tice and the modern…

In February 2015, the Brennan Center for Justice released a report exam­in­ing poten­tial expla­na­tions for the dra­mat­ic drop in crime in the U.S. in the 1990s and 2000s. The death penal­ty was one of the pos­si­ble con­tribut­ing caus­es the researchers eval­u­at­ed. The report’s con­clu­sion: the death penal­ty had no effect on the decline in crime. The authors explained:​“Empirically, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is too infre­quent to have a mea­sure­able effect on the crime drop.

On February 9, the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association unan­i­mous­ly passed two res­o­lu­tions call­ing for unan­i­mous juries in cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing and greater trans­paren­cy in lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. Resolution 108A stat­ed:​“Before a court can impose a sen­tence of death, a jury must unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend or vote to impose that sen­tence,” and,​“The jury in such cas­es must also unan­i­mous­ly agree on the exis­tence of any fact that is…