Publications & Testimony

In an op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman, for­mer Texas Governor Mark White called for a new hear­ing for Edgar Tamayo, a Mexican nation­al sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 22. Foreign nation­als charged with crimes in the U.S. are enti­tled to assis­tance from their con­sulate under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, but Tamayo was denied that right. White joins U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the Mexican Foreign…

The Kansas Judicial Council, an advi­so­ry body to the leg­is­la­ture, released pre­lim­i­nary find­ings on the cost of the death penal­ty in prepa­ra­tion for leg­isla­tive hear­ings on a repeal mea­sure. The coun­cil found that state Supreme Court Justices spend 20 times more hours on death penal­ty appeals than on non-cap­i­tal appeals; the Department of Corrections spends than twice as much ($49,380 ver­sus $24,690) to house a death-row inmate per year as to house a…

Six retired judges in North Carolina urged the the state Supreme Court to uphold the rul­ings of a low­er court that found racial bias in the use of the death peanl­ty. Former chief jus­tices James Exum and Henry Frye, along with for­mer judges Willis Whichard, Melzer Morgan, Wade Barber and Russell Walker filed a brief in sup­port of inmates whose death sen­tences were reduced to life with­out parole in 2012 under the state’s Racial Justice Act. The Act allowed death row inmates to…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Montgomery Advertiser crit­i­cized a pro­pos­al by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange to speed up death penal­ty appeals. His pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would require two parts of the appeal process to essen­tial­ly run con­cur­rent­ly. The edi­to­r­i­al cau­tioned that lack of ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion for death penal­ty defen­dants would make the accel­er­at­ed process more prob­lem­at­ic. The paper con­clud­ed, ​“Anything that smacks of haste in cap­i­tal punishment…

On January 10, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost will con­sid­er a chal­lenge to an exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure in Ohio that has nev­er been used before in the coun­try. Dennis McGuire is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 16, and his attor­neys are argu­ing the new drugs could cause a very painful death, say­ing, ​“McGuire will expe­ri­ence the agony and ter­ror of air hunger as he strug­gles to breathe for five min­utes after [exe­cu­tion­ers] intra­venous­ly inject him with…

Family mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims gath­ered out­side a cour­t­house in Castle Rock, Colorado, in sup­port of Robert Autobee, whose son was mur­dered, but who oppos­es the death penal­ty for the per­pe­tra­tor. Inside the cour­t­house, jury selec­tion was under­way in the tri­al of Edward Montour, who is accused of mur­der­ing cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer Eric Autobee (pic­tured), Robert’s son. Montour orig­i­nal­ly plead­ed guilty and was sen­tenced to death, but his con­vic­tion was…

On January 7, the Boston Bar Association, rep­re­sent­ing more than 10,000 lawyers, released a state­ment oppos­ing the use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The Association already had a long­stand­ing posi­tion against the death penal­ty in state cas­es. Paul T. Dacier (pic­tured), the President of the Boston Bar, said, ​“Without equiv­o­ca­tion, the death penal­ty has no place in the fair admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice and makes no sense on a prac­ti­cal lev­el.” The orga­ni­za­tion’s new stance was…

In a recent arti­cle in the Atlantic, Marc Bookman com­pared the path through the jus­tice sys­tem of two co-defen­dants sen­tenced to death in Florida after com­mit­ting mur­der in 1977. Beauford White was elec­tro­cut­ed in 1987, despite his tri­al jury vot­ing 12 – 0 for a life sen­tence. The tri­al judge over­rode that rec­om­men­da­tion and imposed death. White’s co-defen­dant, John Ferguson, lived for anoth­er 26 years before being exe­cut­ed in 2013.

Ronald George is a for­mer Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, who reg­u­lar­ly upheld death sen­tences. However, in his recent book, Chief: The Quest for Justice in California, he ques­tioned the geo­graph­i­cal dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the state. In his chap­ter, ​“Reforming the Judicial System,” he wrote, ​“You could have the exact same crime, let’s say a straight­for­ward street rob­bery homi­cide, result in the seeking…

An inves­ti­ga­tion by St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon found that the source of Missouri​’s lethal injec­tion drug, pen­to­bar­bi­tal, is a com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy in Oklahoma, not licensed to sell drugs in Missouri. Until very recent­ly, com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies have been reg­u­lat­ed only by state phar­ma­cy boards, not by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Thus, a phar­ma­cy in Oklahoma may be held to dif­fer­ent stan­dards than one in…