Publications & Testimony

Dr. Marc Stern, the for­mer assis­tant sec­re­tary of health­care for the Washington Department of Corrections, recent­ly com­ment­ed on physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions in the wake of the botched lethal injec­tions in Oklahoma and Arizona. Dr. Stern resigned rather than coop­er­ate with his state’s exe­cu­tion plan. He explained his views, ​“Although its foun­da­tion is in med­ical sci­ence, lethal injec­tion is not a med­ical procedure:…

A joint com­mit­tee of 32 sen­a­tors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives held the first pub­lic hear­ing on Kentucky​’s death penal­ty since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed there in 1975. The hear­ing was prompt­ed by a death penal­ty repeal bill pro­posed by Republican Rep. David Floyd, who said the death penal­ty should be end­ed because of the cost and time it takes for cas­es to com­plete the appeals process. He was also con­cerned about the num­ber of death penal­ty cas­es that have been…

On August 1, the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) released 330 pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood on July 23. Although not a report on why the exe­cu­tion took near­ly 2 hours to com­plete, the doc­u­ments reveal that Wood was inject­ed with 15 con­sec­u­tive dos­es (50 mg each) of mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone, far more than indi­cat­ed in the state’s pro­to­col. Dale Baich, an…

Cameron Todd Willingham was exe­cut­ed in Texas in 2004. His con­vic­tion was based large­ly on foren­sic evi­dence of arson that both pros­e­cu­tors and defense attor­neys now agree was seri­ous­ly flawed. Prosecutors have main­tained that oth­er evi­dence point­ed towards Willingham’s guilt, espe­cial­ly the tes­ti­mo­ny of a jail­house infor­mant who said Willingham con­fessed to the crime of mur­der­ing his chil­dren. Now accord­ing to an inves­tiga­tive arti­cle by Maurice Possley for…

On July 31, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke about the death penal­ty review under­way at the Department of Justice and the need for greater trans­paren­cy in lethal injec­tion meth­ods. Holder said he was ​“great­ly trou­bled” by the recent botched exe­cu­tions, adding that states should pro­vide more infor­ma­tion about the drugs they plan to use. He said, “[F]or the state to exer­cise that great­est of all pow­ers, to end a human life, it seems to me… that…

A new study by Prof. Meredith Martin Rountree of Northwestern University Law School exam­ined the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Texas death row inmates who waived all or part of their nor­mal appeals, thus has­ten­ing their exe­cu­tion. Referring to these inmates as ​“vol­un­teers,” she com­pared them with sim­i­lar­ly-sit­u­at­ed inmates who did not waive their appeals. She found that more vol­un­teers expe­ri­enced depres­sion or had attempt­ed sui­cide than non-vol­un­teers. She also…

Alabama is the only state that in which judges reg­u­lar­ly impose death sen­tences even after a jury rec­om­mends a life sen­tence. Death row inmate Courtney Lockhart has asked the Alabama Supreme Court to recon­sid­er his sen­tence imposed as a result of this unique process. Lockhart was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der in 2010. The jury unan­i­mous­ly found that his post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, result­ing from his mil­i­tary ser­vice in Iraq, was suf­fi­cient­ly mit­i­gat­ing to…

Although Arizona offi­cials have claimed that Joseph Wood was ​“brain dead” dur­ing his two-hour exe­cu­tion on July 23, promi­nent med­ical experts from around the coun­try strong­ly dis­agreed. David Waisel, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of anaes­the­sia at Harvard med­ical school, said a per­son who is brain dead will stop breath­ing unless kept alive on a ven­ti­la­tor. ​“There is no way any­one could ever look at some­one and make that kind of diag­no­sis. He was still…

German offi­cials are with­hold­ing sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence in a mur­der case involv­ing U.S. ser­vice­men because of Germany’s oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. Sean Oliver has been charged with the mur­der of anoth­er mem­ber of the U.S. mil­i­tary, Dmitry Chepusov, in Germany. The U.S. Air Force has juris­dic­tion over the case, but Germany is with­hold­ing coop­er­a­tion unless the U.S. mil­i­tary agrees not to seek a death sen­tence. German police dis­cov­ered the body and…