Publications & Testimony

A grow­ing num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tives have stat­ed their oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. Among them is National Review colum­nist and American Enterprise Institute fel­low Ramesh Ponnuru, who cit­ed his Catholic faith as a rea­son for the change in his stance. He said he had to over­come his ini­tial emo­tion­al response to heinous crimes because, ​“Our emo­tion­al or intu­itive reac­tions are not a sure guide to right and wrong in mat­ters of moral import.” He added that the death…

A retri­al date of Sept. 22 has been set for Jerry Hartfield, who has been held with­out a valid con­vic­tion in Texas for over 30 years. Hartfield was con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1977 and sen­tenced to death. His con­vic­tion was over­turned in 1980 due to an improp­er­ly select­ed jury, and the appeals court ordered a new tri­al, but that was nev­er held. Gov. Mark White attempt­ed to com­mute his sen­tence in 1983, but with­out a con­vic­tion, the com­mu­ta­tion was invalid. In…

A recent op-ed by Jordan Steiker, endowed pro­fes­sor of law and Director of the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas, high­light­ed the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty in that state. AlthoughTexas leads the nation in exe­cu­tions, death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions per year have dropped sharply since the 1990s. Prof. Steiker wrote, ​“In 1999, Texas juries returned an astound­ing 48 death sen­tences. Since 2008, how­ev­er, Texas has…

Despite the 3 exe­cu­tions car­ried out on June 17 and 18, exe­cu­tions and death sen­tences in the U.S. have steadi­ly declined since the 1990s. Moreover, the num­ber of states car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions has also dropped to a small minor­i­ty (see chart). Since exe­cu­tions peaked in 1999, the num­ber of states car­ry­ing out at least one exe­cu­tion in a year has fall­en by over 50%. In 1999, 20 states car­ried out exe­cu­tions. In 2012 and 2013, just 9 states did so. As of June…

Some defen­dants who com­mit mur­der are auto­mat­i­cal­ly exclud­ed from the death penal­ty in the U.S., such as juve­niles and the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. Others with sim­i­lar deficits are reg­u­lar­ly exe­cut­ed. A new study by Robert Smith (l.), Sophie Cull, and Zoe Robinson exam­ined the mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence present in 100 recent cas­es result­ing in exe­cu­tion, test­ing whether the offend­ers pos­sessed qual­i­ties sim­i­lar to those spared from exe­cu­tion. The authors found that ​“Nearly nine of every ten executed…

Georgia and Missouri each car­ried out an exe­cu­tion on June 17 and 18 respec­tive­ly, mark­ing the first exe­cu­tions since the botched lethal injec­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma on April 29. Georgia exe­cut­ed Marcus Wellons (l.) after chal­lenges to the state’s lethal injec­tion secre­cy law were denied. One of the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit that allowed the exe­cu­tion wrote sep­a­rate­ly of the…

The most recent issue of The Angolite, a mag­a­zine writ­ten and pub­lished by pris­on­ers at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, which hous­es the state’s death row, con­tains a num­ber of arti­cles rel­e­vant to the death penal­ty. The first, ​“Shifting Values,” dis­cuss­es the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty through an exam­i­na­tion of devel­op­ments in 2013. A sec­ond arti­cle, ​“Death House Cat & Mouse,” reports on Louisiana’s com­pli­cat­ed strug­gle to obtain lethal injection…

On June 12, the Supreme Court of Florida (6 – 1) over­turned the con­vic­tions and death sen­tence of Carl Dausch because the state pre­sent­ed insuf­fi­cient evi­dence of his guilt at tri­al. The Court direct­ed that he be acquit­ted of all offens­es, stat­ing, “[T]he record lacks suf­fi­cient evi­dence of the per­pe­tra­tor’s iden­ti­ty.” Dausch was con­vict­ed pri­mar­i­ly on fin­ger­prints and DNA from a cig­a­rette butt that were found in the vic­tim’s car. DNA evi­dence tak­en from the…

The American Bar Association has released a new pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2014, exam­in­ing major issues, trends and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The chap­ter devot­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was writ­ten by Ronald Tabak, an attor­ney at Skadden Arps. Tabak presents evi­dence of the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly not­ing the grow­ing geo­graph­ic iso­la­tion of the…

California announced plans to add a 40-bed psy­cha­tric hos­pi­tal to its death row at San Quentin to treat deeply dis­turbed inmates in need of 24-hour care for men­tal ill­ness. In 2013 a fed­er­al judge ordered the state to pro­vide death-row inmates access to inpa­tient psy­chi­atric treat­ment. Following court-ordered men­tal eval­u­a­tions, the state iden­ti­fied 37 men with severe men­tal ill­ness­es requir­ing full-time care. Attorney Michael Bien, who argued the case that prompt­ed the…