Publications & Testimony

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

(Click to enlarge) According to a report by the Christian Science Monitor, Duval County, Florida, has the high­est per capi­ta rate for inmates on death row of any U.S. coun­ty. Duval has sen­tenced one per­son to death for every 14,000 res­i­dents. It is among the 2% of coun­ties in the U.S. repon­si­ble for a major­i­ty of all inmates on death row as of 2013, as described in DPIC’s report, The 2% Death Penalty. Duval County ranked 8^th,…

On Nov. 26, Judge Tom Price dis­sent­ed from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ denial of relief for Scott Panetti:​“Having spent the last forty years as a judge for the State of Texas, of which the last eigh­teen years have been as a judge on this Court, I have giv­en a sub­stan­tial amount of con­sid­er­a­tion to the pro­pri­ety of the death penal­ty as a form of pun­ish­ment for those who com­mit cap­i­tal mur­der, and I now believe that it should be…

On November 24, the FBI released a report on law enforce­ment offi­cers killed in the line of duty in 2013. Twenty-sev­en (27) offi­cers were killed in​“felo­nious acts,” a 45% drop com­pared to 2012, when 49 offi­cers were killed, and a 53% decline since 2004. Most (15) of the 27 offi­cers killed were in the South, with Texas hav­ing the high­est num­ber of any state (6). Six offi­cers were killed in the West, four in the Midwest, and only two in the Northeast.

Commentary on Scott Panetti​’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion on December 3 in…