Publications & Testimony

The North Carolina Supreme Court has reversed the historic rulings of a Cumberland County, N.C. trial court that had overturned the death sentences of four North Carolina death-row prisoners under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Ruling entirely on procedural grounds, the state’s high court expressed no opinion on the lower court’s fact findings that North Carolina prosecutors had engaged in a decades-long practice of intentional race discrimination in jury selection in capital cases. In April…

Three quarters of American executions in 2015 involved cases of “crippling disabilities and uncertain guilt,” according to a report by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University. Saying that the 2015 executions revealed “a broken capital punishment system,” the report found that, “[o]f the 28 people executed [in 2015], 75% were mentally impaired or disabled, experienced extreme childhood trauma or abuse, or were of questionable guilt.” It said seven people…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit has ruled in favor of Kevan Brumfield, upholding the decision of a Louisiana federal district court that he is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution. Louisiana’s state courts had initially denied Brumfield resources to investigate evidence of his intellectual disability and then dismissed his case without an evidentiary hearing, finding that he had not presented sufficient evidence to justify further review of the issue. A…

On December 16, DPIC released its annual report on the latest developments in capital punishment, “The Death Penalty in 2015: Year End Report.” The death penalty declined by virtually every measure in 2015. 28 people were executed, the fewest since 1991. Death sentences dropped 33% from last year’s historic low, with 49 people being sentenced to death this year. There have now been fewer death sentences imposed in the last decade than in the decade before the U.S. Supreme Court declared…

Arizona officials have agreed not to schedule any executions until a federal court challenge to the state’s lethal injection protocol and secrecy policy is resolved. U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake had previously put the lawsuit on hold while Arizona rewrote its execution protocol. He said the execution hold was necessary to prevent what he called “crisis litigation” — artificially forcing the court to decide issues in the 60 days before an execution was scheduled to occur. Such…

South Dakota state Senator Arthur Rusch (R‑Vermillion, pictured), a former trial court judge who presided over a capital trial in which a defendant was sentenced to death, said he will be introducing legislation next year to repeal the state’s death penalty. Rusch said he supports repeal because of the emotional toll of capital trials on juriors and because of the financial impact of capital punishment. As a former Lincoln County circuit court judge, Rusch presided over the 1997 trial of Donald…

Recent court decisions in cases from Georgia and Arkansas reflect continuing judicial uncertainty regarding lethal injection secrecy. On October 12, an Arkansas trial court overturned the state’s execution secrecy law and ordered the state Department of Corrections to disclose the drugs that it intends to use in executions and the source of those drugs. In a December 3 opinion requiring disclosure by the following day, Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Wendell Griffen wrote, “It is common…

“[E]lectoral pressures influence judges’ decisions in capital cases,” according to a new report by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. That report, How Judicial Elections Impact Criminal Cases, surveyed numerous empirical studies that had reviewed the effects of judicial elections on outcomes in criminal cases. The vast majority of criminal defendants — including capital defendants — face elected judges at trial and on appeal. According to the report, 87% of…

Historical trends in executions and new death sentences closely track changes in public attitudes about the death penalty and crime in general, according to a comprehensive University of North Carolina analysis of national public opinion surveys on the death penalty. UNC-Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner has created a statistical index of public support for capital punishment based upon the results of 488 national surveys on the death penalty over the last 40 years. This index documents…