Publications & Testimony

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…

Attorneys for Robert Holsey, an inmate on death row in Georgia, have filed a clemen­cy peti­tion before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Holsey is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on December 9, despite the fact that the lawyer who rep­re­sent­ed him at tri­al drank a quart of vod­ka a day and failed to present key evi­dence dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing phase of Holsey’s tri­al. The lawyer was lat­er dis­barred for embez­zling clients’ mon­ey and admit­ted that he was…

On December 4, the Ohio Senate Judiciary Committee held a hear­ing on HB 663, which would shield the iden­ti­ty of those who pro­duce lethal injec­tion drugs for the state. Previously, crit­ics of the bill had warned that the mea­sure could be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it inter­feres with the courts and vio­lates the First Amendment right to free speech. Among those tes­ti­fy­ing at the com­mit­tee hear­ing was Kevin Smith of the Society of Professional Journalists, who called the bill, ​“one…

A recent study com­mis­sioned by the Nevada leg­is­la­ture found that the aver­age death penal­ty case costs a half mil­lion dol­lars more than a case in which the death penal­ty is not sought. The Legislative Auditor esti­mat­ed the cost of a mur­der tri­al in which the death penal­ty was sought cost $1.03 to $1.3 mil­lion, where­as cas­es with­out the death penal­ty cost $775,000. The audi­tor sum­ma­rized the study’s find­ings, say­ing, ​“Adjudicating death penal­ty cas­es takes more time and…

In an op-ed in the Boston Herald, Michael Avery, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at Suffolk University Law School, whose sis­ter and niece were mur­dered 30 years ago, sug­gest­ed that a plea bar­gain might be a bet­ter our­come for all con­cerned in the case of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the defen­dant in the Boston Marathon bomb­ing. A tri­al, he said, would be painful for vic­tims and sur­vivors: ​“Boston will relive every tortu[r]ous moment of the bomb­ing, over and over, prob­a­bly for weeks…if…

A new poll found that Americans oppose the death penal­ty for peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness by more than a 2 – 1 mar­gin. According to Public Policy Polling, 58% of respon­dents opposed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness, while only 28% sup­port­ed it. Professor Robert Smith, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of law at the University of North Carolina who com­mis­sioned the poll, said, ​“Today’s impor­tant polling is part of sig­nif­i­cant new research which clear­ly shows an emerg­ing con­sen­sus against…