Publications & Testimony

As states con­tin­ue to seek alter­na­tive drugs and drug sources for lethal injec­tions, three sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments occurred last week. Indiana announced recent­ly that they would use Brevital, an anes­thet­ic, as the first drug in its three-drug pro­to­col. On May 27, Par Pharmaceutical, the pro­duc­er of Brevital, released a state­ment announc­ing efforts to pre­vent the use of their prod­uct in exe­cu­tions. The state­ment said, ​“The state of Indiana’s pro­posed use is con­trary to our…

The New Republic has just released autop­sy pho­tos tak­en after the Florida exe­cu­tion of Angel Diaz in 2006. The exe­cu­tion was so bad­ly botched that it prompt­ed then-Governor Jeb Bush to tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend exe­cu­tions so the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure could be reviewed. The nee­dles that should have been insert­ed into Diaz’s veins were instead pushed through into the sur­round­ing tis­sue, caus­ing exten­sive chem­i­cal burns. Dr.

In a 5 – 2 rul­ing issued on May 19, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the state’s law that hides the source and the iden­ti­ty of the pre­par­er of drugs and equip­ment used in exe­cu­tions. The court said, ​“We con­clude that Georgia’s exe­cu­tion process is like­ly made more time­ly and order­ly by the exe­cu­tion-par­tic­i­pant con­fi­den­tial­i­ty statute.…” The rul­ing lift­ed the stay of exe­cu­tion that was in place for Warren Hill, whose lawyers chal­lenged the law. In a dissent,…

I Am Troy Davis is a recent book by Jen Marlowe and Troy Davis’ sis­ter, Martina Davis-Correia, that tells the sto­ry of a pos­si­bly inno­cent man who was exe­cut­ed in Georgia in 2011. Troy Davis was sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a police offi­cer in Savannah. Years lat­er evi­dence cast­ing doubts about his guilt emerged, includ­ing recan­ta­tions from sev­er­al of the wit­ness­es who had tes­ti­fied against him. Pope Benedict XVI, President…

On May 27, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Hall v. Florida that Florida’s strict IQ cut­off for deter­min­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in cap­i­tal cas­es is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The Court con­clud­ed, ​“Florida’s law con­tra­venes our Nation’s com­mit­ment to dig­ni­ty and its duty to teach human decen­cy as the mark of a civilized…

On May 22, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law a bill that will allow the state to use the elec­tric chair in exe­cu­tions if lethal injec­tion drugs are not avail­able. While sev­en states, includ­ing Tennessee, allow inmates to choose the elec­tric chair as their method of exe­cu­tion, no oth­er state forces inmates to be exe­cut­ed by that method. Defense attor­ney David Raybin, who helped draft Tennessee’s death penal­ty law in the 1970s, said that changing the…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics recent­ly issued a new report, ​“Capital Punishment, 2012,” ana­lyz­ing the use of the death penal­ty in that year and reveal­ing over­all trends since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed. The report not­ed that 2012 was ​“the twelfth con­sec­u­tive year in which the num­ber of inmates under sen­tence of death decreased.” Among the sta­tis­tics not report­ed else­where, BJS not­ed that the time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion in 2012 was 15.8 years. The average…

UPDATE: The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of exe­cu­tion, pend­ing the out­come of a review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8^th Circuit. The Court fur­ther not­ed: ​“We leave for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion in the low­er courts whether an evi­den­tiary hearing is…

A recent poll by Quinnipiac University found that Ohioans sup­port life sen­tences over the death penal­ty for peo­ple con­vict­ed of mur­der. A total of 49% of respon­dents chose sen­tences of life with­out parole (40%) or life with parole (9%), com­pared to just 43% who chose the death penal­ty. The sur­vey also showed a 4‑point drop in death penal­ty sup­port in just the last three months. In February, 47% of respon­dents said they pre­ferred the death penal­ty. Death penal­ty support was…

On May 15, the Associated Press and four oth­er media orga­ni­za­tions filed suit against the state of Missouri, ask­ing a state court to order the Department of Corrections (DOC) to release infor­ma­tion about the source of its lethal injec­tion drugs. Under Missouri law, the iden­ti­ty of the ​“exe­cu­tion team” is secret, and the DOC has inter­pret­ed the drug sup­pli­er to be a part of that team. The oth­er four news orga­ni­za­tions are the Guardian‑U.S., the…