Publications & Testimony

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon recent­ly called on all nations to take con­crete steps toward end­ing the death penal­ty. In his open­ing remarks at an event co-spon­sored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Ban said, ​“Together, we can final­ly end this cru­el and inhu­mane prac­tice every­where around the world.” He not­ed that ​“more than four out of five coun­tries — an esti­mat­ed 160 Member States — have either abol­ished the death penal­ty or do not prac­tice it.”…

The the­o­ry of the mod­ern death penal­ty is that it is to be reserved for the ​“worst of the worst” offend­ers. In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court deter­mined (Roper v. Simmons) that those under age 18 at the time of their crime were less cul­pa­ble than old­er defen­dants and should be exclud­ed from the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion. However, a recent paper by Hollis Whitson (l.) argued that sci­en­tif­ic research on old­er ado­les­cents implied that the Court’s analy­sis should also apply…

Justice Barbara Pariente of the Florida Supreme Court recent­ly com­ment­ed on the dan­ger of mis­take in eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny and the impor­tance of warn­ing juries about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error. Her com­ments came in a death penal­ty case where she said that wide­ly accept­ed sci­en­tif­ic research, “ ​‘con­vinc­ing­ly demon­strates the fal­li­bil­i­ty of eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tes­ti­mo­ny and pin­points an array of vari­ables that are most like­ly to lead to a mistaken…

On June 26, the Florida Supreme Court over­turned the cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion of Paul Hildwin and ordered a new tri­al because new DNA evi­dence com­plete­ly con­tra­dict­ed the state’s evi­dence pre­sent­ed at tri­al. Hildwin was con­vict­ed of a 1985 mur­der and sex­u­al assault. At tri­al, an FBI foren­sics expert wrong­ly claimed that bod­i­ly flu­ids found at the crime scene matched Hildwin and could not have come from the vic­tim’s boyfriend. However, more recent DNA testing…

The Tulsa World of Oklahoma recent­ly con­duct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion into the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col in the wake of the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in April. Comparing Oklahoma’s pro­to­col to those of 19 oth­er states, the study found that Oklahoma lacks basic safe­guards fol­lowed in many oth­er states. Among those are reg­u­lar train­ing for the exe­cu­tion team, the avail­abil­i­ty of back­up drugs in the event of a prob­lem with the…

A grow­ing num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tives have stat­ed their oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty. Among them is National Review colum­nist and American Enterprise Institute fel­low Ramesh Ponnuru, who cit­ed his Catholic faith as a rea­son for the change in his stance. He said he had to over­come his ini­tial emo­tion­al response to heinous crimes because, ​“Our emo­tion­al or intu­itive reac­tions are not a sure guide to right and wrong in mat­ters of moral import.” He added that the death…

A retri­al date of Sept. 22 has been set for Jerry Hartfield, who has been held with­out a valid con­vic­tion in Texas for over 30 years. Hartfield was con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1977 and sen­tenced to death. His con­vic­tion was over­turned in 1980 due to an improp­er­ly select­ed jury, and the appeals court ordered a new tri­al, but that was nev­er held. Gov. Mark White attempt­ed to com­mute his sen­tence in 1983, but with­out a con­vic­tion, the com­mu­ta­tion was invalid. In…

A recent op-ed by Jordan Steiker, endowed pro­fes­sor of law and Director of the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas, high­light­ed the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty in that state. AlthoughTexas leads the nation in exe­cu­tions, death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions per year have dropped sharply since the 1990s. Prof. Steiker wrote, ​“In 1999, Texas juries returned an astound­ing 48 death sen­tences. Since 2008, how­ev­er, Texas has…

Despite the 3 exe­cu­tions car­ried out on June 17 and 18, exe­cu­tions and death sen­tences in the U.S. have steadi­ly declined since the 1990s. Moreover, the num­ber of states car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions has also dropped to a small minor­i­ty (see chart). Since exe­cu­tions peaked in 1999, the num­ber of states car­ry­ing out at least one exe­cu­tion in a year has fall­en by over 50%. In 1999, 20 states car­ried out exe­cu­tions. In 2012 and 2013, just 9 states did so. As of June…

Some defen­dants who com­mit mur­der are auto­mat­i­cal­ly exclud­ed from the death penal­ty in the U.S., such as juve­niles and the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. Others with sim­i­lar deficits are reg­u­lar­ly exe­cut­ed. A new study by Robert Smith (l.), Sophie Cull, and Zoe Robinson exam­ined the mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence present in 100 recent cas­es result­ing in exe­cu­tion, test­ing whether the offend­ers pos­sessed qual­i­ties sim­i­lar to those spared from exe­cu­tion. The authors found that ​“Nearly nine of every ten executed…