Publications & Testimony

(UPDATE: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has granted Bernardo Tercero a stay of execution to permit him to litigate evidence that a lead prosecution witness testified falsely against him.) The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a unit of the Organization of American States, has called on Texas officials to stay the execution of Nicaraguan citizen Bernardo Tercero (pictured), who is scheduled to be executed in Texas on August 26. Under international treaties on consular…

In the first episode of season 2 of “Death Row Stories,” CNN examined the case of Ruben Cantu, who was executed in Texas in 1993 despite serious doubts about his guilt. The episode featured an interview with Sam Milsap, the District Attorney at the time of Cantu’s trial, who asserted his belief in Cantu’s innocence. Cantu’s co-defendant and a key eyewitness from the case both supported Cantu’s claim of innocence. The hour-long episode of the documentary series recounted how Lise Olsen, an…

A Food and Drug Administration letter to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction indicated the state was considering importing sodium thiopental from overseas for use in executions. The letter warned the department that importing the drug would violate federal law: “Please note that there is no FDA approved application for sodium thiopental, and it is illegal to import an unapproved new drug into the United States.” A similar letter was sent to Nebraska officials after the state…

A recent op-ed by former Texas Governor Mark White (pictured) and former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Gerald Kogan criticized a recently passed North Carolina law that imposes secrecy on the source of lethal injection drugs and removes execution procedures from public review and comment. The authors said the new law will only prolong litigation, rather than ending North Carolina’s hold on executions, as intended. The op-ed also maintained that the new policy violates democratic…

A new study of trials in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, revealed that potential jurors who were black were much more likely to be struck from juries than non-blacks. The results were consistent with findings from Alabama, North Carolina, and other parts of Louisiana, highlighting an issue that will be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court this fall. In Caddo Parish, an area known for its many death sentences, prosecutors used peremptory strikes against 46% of black jurors, but only 15% of other jurors…

DPIC’s complete set of 50 facts about the death penalty is now available. The 50 facts provide an excellent introduction to a variety of death penalty topics, including costs, deterrence, race, innocence, and more. Each fact is presented in graphical form, with links to further information available on our 50 Facts page. The series is also available on Facebook and Twitter, and we encourage readers to share and retweet items they found particularly interesting or surprising. (Posted by DPIC…

On August 6, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory signed a law that removed the requirement that a physician be present at executions and shrouded in secrecy many elements of the lethal injection process, including the specific drugs to be used and the suppliers of those drugs. By eliminating the physician-participation requirement, the law attempted to remove a legal hurdle that has halted executions in North Carolina since 2006. Two major state newspapers sharply criticized the new law…

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on August 13 that the death penalty violates the state constitution. In the 4 – 3 decision in State v. Santiago, the Court said that, because of the prospective repeal of the death penalty in 2012 and “the state’s near total moratorium on carrying out executions over the past fifty-five years, capital punishment has become incompatible with contemporary standards of decency in Connecticut.” As a result, the Court said, it “now violates the state constitutional…

A new film, “Bloodsworth: An Innocent Man,” premieres on August 13. The movie, described as a “documentary memoir,” tells the story of Kirk Bloodsworth, an innocent man sentenced to death in Maryland who became the first death row prisoner in the United States to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Bloodsworth was convicted and sent to death row in 1985 for the sexual assault and murder of a 9‑year-old girl. He won a new trial as a result of prosecutorial misconduct, but was convicted again and this…

Changes in who is District Attorney have caused a dramatic decline in death sentences in 3 counties that historically have produced a disproportionate number of death sentences in the United States, according to a story from The Marshall Project. Harris County (Houston), Texas, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania were all among the 2% of counties that accounted for 56% of inmates on death row as of 2013, but the resignations or retirements of their long-time…