Publications & Testimony

On July 9, just one day before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed, Tommy Lee Waldrip was grant­ed clemen­cy by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Waldrip will now serve a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Although the Board did not give a rea­son for its deci­sion, one of the issues raised in the case was the dis­pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of Waldrip’s sen­tence com­pared to that of his co-defen­dants. Three men were involved in the mur­der that sent Waldrip to death row, but…

According to a recent op-ed about China in the New York Times, the world leader in exe­cu­tions is hav­ing sec­ond thoughts about the death penal­ty. Liu Renwen, a legal schol­ar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the annu­al num­ber of exe­cu­tions in China dropped by half from 2007 to 2011, as more offend­ers were giv­en ​“sus­pend­ed death sen­tences,” which are gen­er­al­ly reduced to life sen­tences. According to a 2008 poll in three provinces, pub­lic sup­port for the…

Questioning Capital Punishment, a new book by James R. Acker, a pro­fes­sor of crim­i­nal jus­tice at the University at Albany, pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive overview of the death penal­ty in America. With a basis in court deci­sions and research stud­ies, the book cov­ers all the key issues and the argu­ments for and against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Chapters are devot­ed to deter­rence, sen­tenc­ing cri­te­ria, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, and inno­cence, among oth­er top­ics. In review­ing the book,…

The State Bar of Texas has found ​“just cause” to pur­sue dis­ci­pli­nary action against pros­e­cu­tor Charles J. Sebesta, whose con­duct in the tri­al of Anthony Graves (pic­tured) result­ed in a wrong­ful con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Sebesta, the District Attorney of Burleson County, did not inform Graves’ attor­neys that the main wit­ness against Graves had con­fessed to the crime. Graves spent over 18 years in prison, 12 of them on death row, before being exon­er­at­ed in…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA showed a con­tin­u­ing decline in the num­ber of peo­ple on death rows across the coun­try. As of January 1, 2014, there were 3,070 inmates on death row, a decrease of 55 from one year ear­li­er. California con­tin­ued to have the largest death row, with 742 inmates. Since 2000, the nation­al death row pop­u­la­tion has decreased by 16%. Texas, which had the sec­ond largest death…

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon recent­ly called on all nations to take con­crete steps toward end­ing the death penal­ty. In his open­ing remarks at an event co-spon­sored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Ban said, ​“Together, we can final­ly end this cru­el and inhu­mane prac­tice every­where around the world.” He not­ed that ​“more than four out of five coun­tries — an esti­mat­ed 160 Member States — have either abol­ished the death penal­ty or do not prac­tice it.”…

The the­o­ry of the mod­ern death penal­ty is that it is to be reserved for the ​“worst of the worst” offend­ers. In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court deter­mined (Roper v. Simmons) that those under age 18 at the time of their crime were less cul­pa­ble than old­er defen­dants and should be exclud­ed from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion. However, a recent paper by Hollis Whitson (l.) argued that sci­en­tif­ic research on old­er ado­les­cents implied that the Court’s analy­sis should also apply…

Justice Barbara Pariente of the Florida Supreme Court recent­ly com­ment­ed on the dan­ger of mis­take in eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny and the impor­tance of warn­ing juries about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error. Her com­ments came in a death penal­ty case where she said that wide­ly accept­ed sci­en­tif­ic research, “ ​‘con­vinc­ing­ly demon­strates the fal­li­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tes­ti­mo­ny and pin­points an array of vari­ables that are most like­ly to lead to a mistaken…

On June 26, the Florida Supreme Court over­turned the cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion of Paul Hildwin and ordered a new tri­al because new DNA evi­dence com­plete­ly con­tra­dict­ed the state’s evi­dence pre­sent­ed at tri­al. Hildwin was con­vict­ed of a 1985 mur­der and sex­u­al assault. At tri­al, an FBI foren­sics expert wrong­ly claimed that bod­i­ly flu­ids found at the crime scene matched Hildwin and could not have come from the vic­tim’s boyfriend. However, more recent DNA testing…

The Tulsa World of Oklahoma recent­ly con­duct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion into the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col in the wake of the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in April. Comparing Oklahoma’s pro­to­col to those of 19 oth­er states, the study found that Oklahoma lacks basic safe­guards fol­lowed in many oth­er states. Among those are reg­u­lar train­ing for the exe­cu­tion team, the avail­abil­i­ty of back­up drugs in the event of a prob­lem with the…