Publications & Testimony

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…

According to a report released on July 16 by the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to pro­vide time­ly notice to many cap­i­tal defen­dants that their cas­es were under review for pos­si­bly inac­cu­rate tes­ti­mo­ny by FBI experts. Some of these defen­dants were exe­cut­ed with­out being informed of the mis­lead­ing tes­ti­mo­ny pro­vid­ed by the gov­ern­ment. The report stat­ed: “[T]he FBI did not take sufficient steps…

In a sweep­ing rul­ing on July 16, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney held that California​’s death penal­ty is so dys­func­tion­al as to amount to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. Vacating the death sen­tence of Ernest Jones, who has been on death row for almost 20 years, Judge Carney said the pun­ish­ment can­not serve the pur­pos­es of deter­rence or ret­ri­bu­tion when it is admin­is­tered to a tiny select few, decades after their sen­tenc­ing: ​“Inordinate and unpre­dictable delay has…