Publications & Testimony

As the new year begins, there are sev­er­al notable events relat­ed to the death penal­ty like­ly to occur in the next few months. The first exe­cu­tion of the year is sched­uled for January 7 in Florida. The exe­cu­tion of Askari Muhammad had orig­i­nal­ly been sched­uled for December 3, 2013, but was stayed due to a chal­lenge to the state’s new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The Florida Supreme Court approved the new pro­to­col, and the exe­cu­tion was resched­uled, though legal chal­lenges are…

Some legal and psy­chi­atric experts have con­clud­ed that vet­er­ans with post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der should be inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. In an arti­cle in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, men­tal health experts Drs. Hal Wortzel and David Arciniegas wrote, ​“The tragedy of the wound­ed com­bat vet­er­an who faces exe­cu­tion by the nation he has served seems to be an avoid­able one, and we, as a soci­ety, should take action to ensure that it does not hap­pen.” A 2008…

In a recent op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal, the pres­i­dent of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association dis­cussed the high costs of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, Barbara Mandel detailed the expens­es involved in the recent fed­er­al tri­al of John McCluskey. He was sen­tenced to life with­out parole, an out­come that Mandel wrote, ​“occurred years and at least a mil­lion dol­lars lat­er than it should have.” According to the op-ed, McCluskey had…

Mexican for­eign min­is­ter José Antonio Meade Kuribreña recent­ly sent let­ters to Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles request­ing that the exe­cu­tion of Edgar Arias Tamayo, a Mexican cit­i­zen, be post­poned or com­mut­ed. Tamayo is cur­rent­ly on death row in Texas and is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion for on January 22, 2014. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. to…

National and local media have focused sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion on DPIC’s recent 2013 Year End Report. Coverage has includ­ed pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, CNN, on the wires of the Associated Press and Reuters, and in hun­dreds of oth­er arti­cles and edi­to­ri­als. Papers high­light­ed the main theme of…

Jeffrey Toobin, writ­ing in The New Yorker, used the cur­rent scram­ble among states to pro­cure the drugs for lethal injec­tions as a par­a­digm of the much longer effort to make the death penal­ty palat­able to the American pub­lic. ​“The sto­ry of the death penal­ty in this coun­try,” he wrote, ​“illus­trates a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly American faith in a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion to any prob­lem.” However, Toobin con­clud­ed, tech­nol­o­gy can not cov­er up the broad­er prob­lems of capital…

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A new report from Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights col­lects the sto­ries of fam­i­lies who have had a loved one mur­dered who was in law enforce­ment. The fam­i­lies dis­cuss the pres­sure they faced to demand the death penal­ty as pun­ish­ment, their efforts to pre­vent more vio­lence, and their evolv­ing views on the death penal­ty. Kathy Dillon, whose father was mur­dered in 1974 while on duty as a New York State Trooper, said, “[I]n the case of my father’s mur­der, the death…

As an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, Dr. Joel Zivot applied some of the same drugs in oper­at­ing rooms as are used in exe­cu­tions in the U.S. He admired their life-sav­ing qual­i­ties for patients, but bri­dled at their use in tak­ing lives. Writing recent­ly in USA Today, he cau­tioned against this ​“poi­so­nous” use of med­i­cines, say­ing, ​“States may choose to exe­cute their cit­i­zens, but when they employ lethal injec­tion, they are not prac­tic­ing med­i­cine. They are usurp­ing the tools and…