Publications & Testimony
Items: 2851 — 2860
Oct 06, 2014
Pennsylvania Has 90% Reversal Rate for Death Penalty Cases Completing Appeals
On September 24, Pennsylvania reached a new milestone with the 250th death-sentence reversal since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. The state has imposed approximately 412 death sentences since reinstatement. Only three prisoners were executed, and all three waived at least part of their appeals. There have been no executions in Pennsylvania for 15 years. Over 60% of all death sentences imposed in the state have been overturned by state or federal courts; 190…
Read MoreOct 03, 2014
Supreme Court Begins New Term with at Least One Capital Case
The U.S. Supreme Court will begin its 2014 – 15 term on October 6. One of the cases the Court will hear during its first month is Jennings v. Stephens, a Texas death penalty case involving ineffectiveness of counsel and whether a separate appeal is necessary for each such claim. Oral arguments will take place on October 15. The Court has been asked to review an appeal from Scott Panetti, another death row inmate from…
Read MoreOct 02, 2014
ARTICLES: Excluding Blacks from Death Penalty Juries Violates Rights As Citizens
An article in the most recent issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review examines the practice of excluding African-Americans from jury service, particularly in death penalty cases in North Carolina. In Bias in the Box, Dax-Devlon Ross notes, “Alongside the right to vote, the right to serve on a jury is an enduring pillar of our democracy.…Nevertheless, there is perhaps no arena of public life where racial bias has been as broadly overlooked or casually…
Read MoreOct 01, 2014
Georgia Judge Would Allow Execution of Intellectually Disabled Man, But Calls for Higher Court Review
A county judge in Georgia denied relief for Warren Hill, a death row inmate whose diagnosed intellectual disabilities have failed to meet the state’s narrow standard for exemption from the death penalty. However, the judge encouraged the state Supreme Court to consider whether a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Hall v. Florida, should require Georgia to modify its standard. Chief Judge Thomas Wilson of Butts County said, “In light…
Read MoreSep 30, 2014
BOOKS: “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson
Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, has written a new book, Just Mercy, about his experiences defending the poor and the wrongfully convicted throughout the south. It includes the story of one of Stevenson’s first cases as a young lawyer, that of Walter McMillian, who was eventually exonerated and freed from death row. McMillian, a black man, had been convicted of the murder of a white woman in…
Read MoreSep 29, 2014
Supreme Court Again Asked to Consider Competence to be Executed in Texas Case
is a death row inmate in Texas, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and believes he is at the center of a struggle between God and Satan. The state has continued to insist he is competent to be executed. Panetti represented himself at his trial, appearing in court wearing a cowboy outfit and making bizarre, rambling statements. He attempted to subpoena Jesus Christ, the pope, and 200 others. He was convicted and sentenced…
Read MoreSep 26, 2014
The Angolite Features Louisiana’s Death Row Exonerees
An article in the latest edition of The Angolite, a magazine published by prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, tells the stories of the ten men who have been exonerated from death row in that state. The piece prominently features Glenn Ford, the state’s most recent inmate to be freed. Ford spent 30 years on death row before being released in 2014. Among the other cases described is that of John…
Read MoreSep 25, 2014
REPRESENTATON: Death Row Inmate Received Bizarre Defense
Phillip Cheatham was represented at his death penalty trial by a lawyer who failed to develop a readily available alibi defense and portrayed Cheatham as a possible killer. The lawyer, Ira Dennis Hawver (pictured at his disbarment hearing, left), presented Cheatham as a drug-dealing killer who would not have left a witness alive to identify him and would have taken fewer shots to kill the victims. Hawyer admitted he might not have jumped…
Read MoreSep 24, 2014
NEW VOICES: Former FBI Director Says People Were Executed Based Partly on Faulty Agency Testimony
William Sessions, former head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, recently pointed to cases of defendants who were executed based in part on faulty hair and fiber analysis in calling for changes in the use of forensic evidence. In an op-ed in the Washington Times, Sessions told the story of Benjamin Boyle, who was executed in Texas in 1997. His conviction was based on testing conducted by an FBI crime lab that an official review…
Read MoreSep 23, 2014
NEW VOICES: Former Ohio Attorney General Now Opposes Death Penalty and Calls for Reform
Jim Petro served as Ohio’s Attorney General and presided over 18 executions. However, he abandoned his support for capital punishment after seeing the risks of wrongful executions: “Our justice system is based on the decision-making of human beings, and human beings are fallible. We make mistakes and our judgments are influenced by biases and imperfect motivations. Implementing the death penalty makes our errors permanent and impossible to remedy.” Recently,…
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