Publications & Testimony

Former death row inmate Ricky Jackson will be for­mal­ly exon­er­at­ed on November 21 in Ohio, after spend­ing 39 years in prison. A judge in Cleveland will dis­miss all charges against Jackson, with the pros­e­cu­tion in agree­ment. Jackson is one of three men con­vict­ed of the 1975 mur­der of Harold Franks. The oth­er two defen­dants, Ronnie and Wiley Bridgeman, were also sen­tenced to death and have filed a peti­tion for a new tri­al, but that petition…

The Ohio leg­is­la­ture is con­sid­er­ing a bill that would pre­vent the pub­lic and the courts from know­ing the name of com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies that pro­duce lethal injec­tion drugs for the state and the iden­ti­ty of med­ical per­son­nel par­tic­i­pat­ing in exe­cu­tions. Critics of the bill say such inter­fer­ence with the courts and the First Amendment right to free speech would be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. At a com­mit­tee hear­ing, Dennis Hetzel, executive director…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, the Washington Post urged Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley to com­mute the sen­tences of the four men remain­ing on the state’s death row, say­ing,​“To car­ry out exe­cu­tions post-repeal would be both cru­el, because the leg­is­la­tion under­pin­ning the sen­tence has been scrapped, and unusu­al, because doing so would be his­tor­i­cal­ly unprece­dent­ed.” Maryland is one of three states that have repealed the death penalty…

In Part Two of its inves­ti­ga­tion into the fed­er­al review of state death penal­ty cas­es, Death by Deadline, The Marshall Project found that in almost every case where lawyers missed crti­ical fil­ing dead­lines for fed­er­al appeals, the only per­son sanc­tioned was the death row pris­on­er. Often the inmate’s entire fed­er­al review was for­feit­ed. The report high­light­ed the dis­par­i­ty between the 17 fed­er­al judi­cial districts where…

An inves­ti­ga­tion by The Marshall Project showed that since Congress put strict time restric­tions on fed­er­al appeals in 1996, lawyers for death row inmates missed the dead­line at least 80 times, includ­ing 16 in which the pris­on­ers have since been exe­cut­ed. The most recent of such cas­es occurred on Nov. 13, when Chadwick Banks was put to death in Florida with no review in fed­er­al court. This final part of a death penal­ty appeal, also called…

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…

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…

(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…

On November 10 the Justice Department released its annu­al Uniform Crime Report for 2013. The report revealed an over­all decline of 5.2% in the nation­al mur­der rate. The Northeast had the low­est mur­der rate – 3.5 mur­ders per 100,000 peo­ple – and the sharpest decline from last year. The South again had the high­est mur­der rate (5.3). The West had the sec­ond-low­est mur­der rate (4.0), fol­lowed by the Midwest…

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…