Publications & Testimony

Thirty-six states have either abol­ished the death penal­ty, have exe­cu­tions on hold, or have not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in at least 5 years. Recently, three states, Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma, tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed exe­cu­tions as reviews are con­duct­ed of botched exe­cu­tions. In six states, Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, and North…

The exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood III in Arizona on July 23 took near­ly two hours, with wit­ness­es report­ing that Wood gasped and snort­ed more than 600 times dur­ing the pro­ce­dure. Wood was exe­cut­ed using mida­zo­lam and hyr­dro­mor­phone, the same drug pro­to­col used in January’s botched exe­cu­tion of Dennis…

Justin Wolfers, an econ­o­mist and senior fel­low at the Brookings Institution, recent­ly under­scored the prob­lems iden­ti­fied in a sweep­ing rul­ing hold­ing California​’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. ​“Capital pun­ish­ment,” Wolfers said, ​“is not only rare, but it’s also an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly long and drawn-out process.” For many offend­ers, ​“death row may actu­al­ly be safer than life on the street.” He com­pared the rel­a­tive­ly few exe­cu­tions to the large…

In a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, eight retired judges recent­ly asked the Court to review the case of Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed. Reed is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in January 2015. While the judges, who served on fed­er­al and state courts in many juris­dic­tions around the coun­try, did not take a stance on Reed’s inno­cence claims, they urged the Court to hear his appeal so that new evi­dence in the case could be exam­ined under…

On July 19 Prof. Charles Ogletree of Harvard University Law School wrote in the Washington Post about the future of the death penal­ty in the U.S. Noting that the U.S. Supreme Court recent­ly affirmed (Hall v. Florida) that exe­cut­ing defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties serves ​“no legit­i­mate peno­log­i­cal pur­pose,” Prof. Ogletree said this rea­son­ing could be applied to the whole death penal­ty: ​“The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of those fac­ing exe­cu­tion today have…

According to a report released on July 16 by the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to pro­vide time­ly notice to many cap­i­tal defen­dants that their cas­es were under review for pos­si­bly inac­cu­rate tes­ti­mo­ny by FBI experts. Some of these defen­dants were exe­cut­ed with­out being informed of the mis­lead­ing tes­ti­mo­ny pro­vid­ed by the gov­ern­ment. The report stat­ed: “[T]he FBI did not take suf­fi­cient steps…

In a sweep­ing rul­ing on July 16, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney held that California​’s death penal­ty is so dys­func­tion­al as to amount to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. Vacating the death sen­tence of Ernest Jones, who has been on death row for almost 20 years, Judge Carney said the pun­ish­ment can­not serve the pur­pos­es of deter­rence or ret­ri­bu­tion when it is admin­is­tered to a tiny select few, decades after their sen­tenc­ing: ​“Inordinate and unpre­dictable delay has…

A recent law review arti­cle by Professors Carol and Jordan Steiker describes how the Supreme Court’s attempt to close­ly reg­u­late the death penal­ty has led instead to more unpre­dictabil­i­ty in its prac­tice, espe­cial­ly with exe­cu­tions. Writing in the Southern California Law Review, the Steikers, of Harvard Law School and the University of Texas Law School respec­tive­ly, note that, “[T]he shape of con­tem­po­rary death penal­ty prac­tice is in many respects less reg­u­lar than…

UPDATE: Middleton was exe­cut­ed on July 16, after the U.S. Court of Appeals lift­ed his stay. On July 15, a fed­er­al judge in Missouri stayed the exe­cu­tion of John Middleton, less than 24 hours before it was to occur. The judge was con­cerned that Middleton might be men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent, and hence inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion: ​“Middleton has pro­vid­ed evi­dence that he has been diag­nosed with a vari­ety of men­tal-health dis­or­ders and has received a…

A recent poll of 1,600 Russians found that only 52% sup­port the death penal­ty, a sharp decline from 2002, when 73% said they sup­port­ed it. Two years ago, 61% were in favor of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Russia cur­rent­ly has a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty that was put in place in 1996 by President Yeltsin, short­ly before Russia signed a rel­e­vant pro­to­col of the European Convention on Human Rights. Russia’s high court has ruled that even death sen­tences can­not be hand­ed down.