Publications & Testimony

Three cap­i­tal cas­es in one coun­ty have already cost Washington almost $10 mil­lion, and have bare­ly begun. For the tri­al of Christopher Monfort, King County has already spent over $4 mil­lion, and it is still in the jury selec­tion phase. Two oth­er cap­i­tal cas­es in the coun­ty have cost a com­bined $4.9 mil­lion, and the tri­als have not start­ed. The cap­i­tal case of ser­i­al killer Gary Ridgway, which is believed to be the most expen­sive case in Washington’s his­to­ry, cost about $12…

In a recent inter­view, Judge Michael A. Ponsor, who presided over the first fed­er­al death penal­ty tri­al in Massachusetts in over 50 years, warned that the death penal­ty comes with a ​“heavy price” — the risk of exe­cut­ing inno­cent peo­ple: ​“A legal regime per­mit­ting cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment comes with a fair­ly heavy price.…where there’s a death penal­ty inno­cent peo­ple will die. Sooner or lat­er — we hope not too often — some­one who didn’t com­mit the crime will be…

(Click to enlarge). On November 12, the American Psychiatric Association, Mental Health America, 30 for­mer judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and Attorneys General, 50 evan­gel­i­cal faith lead­ers, and the American Bar Association joined many oth­ers in call­ing on Texas Governor Rick Perry to com­mute the sen­tence of death row inmate Scott Panetti because of his severe men­tal ill­ness. Despite his long his­to­ry of hos­pi­tal­iza­tion in men­tal insti­tu­tions, Panetti is…

The U.S. mil­i­tary has its own laws and court sys­tem sep­a­rate from those of the states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Although the mil­i­tary jus­tice sys­tem allows the death penal­ty, no exe­cu­tions have been car­ried out in over 50 years. The last exe­cu­tion was the hang­ing on April 13, 1961 of U.S. Army Private John Bennett for rape and attempt­ed mur­der. The mil­i­tary death penal­ty law was struck down in 1983 but was rein­stat­ed in 1984 with new rules detail­ing the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances that make a…

On November 6, Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler (pic­tured) filed a brief with an appel­late court, for­mal­ly request­ing that the death sen­tence of Jody Lee Miles be vacat­ed. Gansler argued that Miles’s death sen­tence is no longer valid. Miles was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1998. In 2006, Maryland’s Court of Appeals sus­pend­ed exe­cu­tions because the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures had not been law­ful­ly imple­ment­ed. In 2013, the state repealed…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s high­est crim­i­nal court, vacat­ed the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Alfred Brown, who has been on death row for mur­der since 2005. Brown has main­tained his inno­cence and has said that a land­line phone call he made from his girl­friend’s apart­ment the morn­ing of the mur­der would prove it. At his tri­al, Brown’s attor­neys pre­sent­ed no evi­dence of his ali­bi, and his girl­friend changed her tes­ti­mo­ny after she was…

(Click left image to enlarge). A new study by researchers at Cornell University exam­ined the effects of Delaware​’s deci­sion to trans­fer cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing author­i­ty from the jury to the judge at tri­al. The study used data from cap­i­tal cas­es between 1977 and 2007, dur­ing which time Delaware made the shift to judge sen­tenc­ing – one of very few states to employ that pro­ce­dure. According to the study, ​“Judges were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to give a…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row, USA showed a con­tin­u­ing decline in the size of the death row pop­u­la­tion. The new total of 3,035 rep­re­sent­ed a 13% drop from 10 years ear­li­er, when the death row pop­u­la­tion was 3,471. The racial demo­graph­ics of death row have been steady, with white inmates mak­ing up 43% of death row, black inmates com­pos­ing 42%, and Latino inmates 13%. California con­tin­ued to have the largest death row,…

In an op-ed in the New York Times, Sylvie Kauffmann, of the French mag­a­zine Le Monde, described the inter­ac­tion between Europe and the U.S. on the death penal­ty. She not­ed that Felix Rohatyn said the most con­tro­ver­sial sub­ject he faced as the American ambas­sador to France was the enor­mous oppo­si­tion to the U.S. death penal­ty. She also not­ed the broad European refusal to have their drugs used in lethal injec­tions. In a recent devel­op­ment, a German investmunt…