Publications & Testimony

A new study by Prof. Meredith Martin Rountree of Northwestern University Law School exam­ined the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Texas death row inmates who waived all or part of their nor­mal appeals, thus has­ten­ing their exe­cu­tion. Referring to these inmates as ​“vol­un­teers,” she com­pared them with sim­i­lar­ly-sit­u­at­ed inmates who did not waive their appeals. She found that more vol­un­teers expe­ri­enced depres­sion or had attempt­ed sui­cide than non-vol­un­teers. She also…

Alabama is the only state that in which judges reg­u­lar­ly impose death sen­tences even after a jury rec­om­mends a life sen­tence. Death row inmate Courtney Lockhart has asked the Alabama Supreme Court to recon­sid­er his sen­tence imposed as a result of this unique process. Lockhart was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der in 2010. The jury unan­i­mous­ly found that his post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, result­ing from his mil­i­tary ser­vice in Iraq, was suf­fi­cient­ly mit­i­gat­ing to…

Although Arizona offi­cials have claimed that Joseph Wood was ​“brain dead” dur­ing his two-hour exe­cu­tion on July 23, promi­nent med­ical experts from around the coun­try strong­ly dis­agreed. David Waisel, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of anaes­the­sia at Harvard med­ical school, said a per­son who is brain dead will stop breath­ing unless kept alive on a ven­ti­la­tor. ​“There is no way any­one could ever look at some­one and make that kind of diag­no­sis. He was still…

German offi­cials are with­hold­ing sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence in a mur­der case involv­ing U.S. ser­vice­men because of Germany’s oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. Sean Oliver has been charged with the mur­der of anoth­er mem­ber of the U.S. mil­i­tary, Dmitry Chepusov, in Germany. The U.S. Air Force has juris­dic­tion over the case, but Germany is with­hold­ing coop­er­a­tion unless the U.S. mil­i­tary agrees not to seek a death sen­tence. German police dis­cov­ered the body and…

Thirty-six states have either abol­ished the death penal­ty, have exe­cu­tions on hold, or have not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in at least 5 years. Recently, three states, Arizona, Ohio, and Oklahoma, tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed exe­cu­tions as reviews are con­duct­ed of botched exe­cu­tions. In six states, Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, and North…

The exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood III in Arizona on July 23 took near­ly two hours, with wit­ness­es report­ing that Wood gasped and snort­ed more than 600 times dur­ing the pro­ce­dure. Wood was exe­cut­ed using mida­zo­lam and hyr­dro­mor­phone, the same drug pro­to­col used in January’s botched exe­cu­tion of Dennis…

Justin Wolfers, an econ­o­mist and senior fel­low at the Brookings Institution, recent­ly under­scored the prob­lems iden­ti­fied in a sweep­ing rul­ing hold­ing California​’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. ​“Capital pun­ish­ment,” Wolfers said, ​“is not only rare, but it’s also an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly long and drawn-out process.” For many offend­ers, ​“death row may actu­al­ly be safer than life on the street.” He com­pared the rel­a­tive­ly few exe­cu­tions to the large…

In a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, eight retired judges recent­ly asked the Court to review the case of Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed. Reed is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in January 2015. While the judges, who served on fed­er­al and state courts in many juris­dic­tions around the coun­try, did not take a stance on Reed’s inno­cence claims, they urged the Court to hear his appeal so that new evi­dence in the case could be exam­ined under…

On July 19 Prof. Charles Ogletree of Harvard University Law School wrote in the Washington Post about the future of the death penal­ty in the U.S. Noting that the U.S. Supreme Court recent­ly affirmed (Hall v. Florida) that exe­cut­ing defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties serves ​“no legit­i­mate peno­log­i­cal pur­pose,” Prof. Ogletree said this rea­son­ing could be applied to the whole death penal­ty: ​“The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of those fac­ing exe­cu­tion today have…