Publications & Testimony

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…

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled 4 – 3 on November 24 to vacate the conviction and death sentence of Reginald (Reggie) Clemons (pictured), who has been on death row for 22 years for the interracial rape and murder of two sisters. The court said that Clemons, did not receive a fair trial because of prosecutorial misconduct. In particular, the court was troubled by what it concluded was a deliberate failure by prosecutiors to provide Clemons’ defense with evidence that he had been beaten to elicit…

UPDATE: Terrell was denied clemency on Dec. 7 and executed just before 1:00 a.m. on December 9. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that it took a nurse an hour to find a vein for the lethal injection IV and that, as the execution drug was being administered, Terrell mouthed the words: “Didn’t do it.” EARLIER: After three trials, Georgia is set to execute Brian Keith Terrell (pictured) on December 8, unless the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles grants him clemency in a hearing at which…

The counties in the United States that have the highest per capita rate of killings by police officers also rank among the highest in the country in the number of people sentenced to death. In his criminal justice blog, “The Watch,” for the Washington Post, Radley Balko details the “remarkable correlation” between killings by police and death sentences imposed. “There are more than 3,000 counties in the United States,” Balko writes. “But the 13 with the highest rates of police killings are not…

Terry Williams was barely 18 when he killed Amos Norwood, a man who had been sexually abusing him since Williams was 13. A recent article in Mother Jones discusses how the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office — which championed the cause of sexual abuse victims during landmark prosecutions of several clergy abuse cases — is aggressively seeking to execute Williams, employing the very stereotypes about abuse victims it publicly rejected in the clergy trials. At the time of those trials, D.A.

Donnis Musgrove (pictured), an Alabama death row prisoner with a substantial claim of innocence, died of lung cancer on Alabama’s death row on November 25, while his case was pending before a federal judge. Musgrove’s attorneys had asked U.S. District Judge David Proctor to rule quickly because of Musgrove’s medical condition. Musgrove and his co-defendant, David Rogers, who previously died on Alabama’s death row, were sentenced to death in 1988. Rogers’ lawyer, Tommy Nail — now a state court…

Capital murder indictments have plummeted and life sentences risen sharply in Ohio over the past five years, according to a report by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The newspaper’s examination of Ohio prison and other public records revealed that capital indictments in the state have dropped by 77% since 2010, mirroring national trends. Prosecutors are far more likely to seek a sentence of life without parole in cases in which they once would have pursued the death penalty. The paper also reports…