Publications & Testimony

Oliver North, a for­mer Marine and not­ed con­ser­v­a­tive leader, has opposed the death penal­ty for many years. In a recent inter­view, he said, ​“I’m a ​‘law and order’ guy. Don’t get me wrong. Individuals need to be held accountable…but I have always felt… and always said that there are very seri­ous ques­tions about the jus­tice of the death penal­ty. Just a few months ago, a man (Glenn Ford) who was on death row for thir­ty years was found to be inno­cent.” When…

A new book, Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty, describes the his­to­ry of flawed exe­cu­tions in the U.S. from 1890 to 2010. During that peri­od, 8,776 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed and 276 of those exe­cu­tions went wrong in some way. Of all the meth­ods used, lethal injec­tion had the high­est rate of botched exe­cu­tions – about 7%. Austin Sarat, the author of the book and a pro­fes­sor of jurispru­dence and polit­i­cal sci­ence at Amherst…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit stayed the exe­cu­tion of Robert Campbell just hours before he was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Texas on May 13, grant­i­ng him per­mis­sion to file a new peti­tion on his claim of men­tal retar­da­tion. If Campbell is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, he is barred from exe­cu­tion by the Supreme Court’s 2002 rul­ing in Atkins v. Virginia. The unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el not­ed that Texas authorities had…

Mark Edwards, chair of the Nash County (North Carolina) Republican Party, recent­ly spoke about replac­ing the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole: ​“As a con­ser­v­a­tive seek­ing to find the best way to pro­tect the res­i­dents of this great state from crime, I believe the death penal­ty has had its day in North Carolina. It is time to begin the debate on replac­ing the death penal­ty with life in prison with­out parole.” He also said, ​“We are advocating…

Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma recent­ly said he believes the April 29 exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett, ​“was cer­tain­ly not done appro­pri­ate­ly.” Coburn, who is also a physi­cian, added, ​“It’s an unfor­tu­nate thing but, again, any­time you’re doing any­thing with the body, things can go wrong.” He also spoke more broad­ly about his views on the death penal­ty, say­ing, ​“I don’t like it. I wish we put every­body that had such a his­to­ry as this gentleman behind…

As the last act of its leg­isla­tive ses­sion, the Florida Senate passed a bill allow­ing the state to com­pen­sate James Richardson, who had been wrong­ful­ly sen­tenced to death and incar­cer­at­ed for 21 years. In 1967, Richardson, who is black, was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by an all-white jury for the mur­der of his sev­en chil­dren. Many years lat­er, a for­mer babysit­ter con­fessed to the crime, prompt­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion that revealed that wit­ness­es had been…

A recent New York Times edi­to­r­i­al described the ​“hor­rif­ic scene” of Clayton Lockett’s botched exe­cu­tion and called on Oklahoma to “[fol­low] oth­er gov­er­nors and leg­is­la­tures in ban­ning exe­cu­tions, rec­og­niz­ing that the American admin­is­tra­tion of death does not func­tion.” The edi­tors not­ed the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s tem­po­rary halt to the exe­cu­tion and point­ed to polit­i­cal pres­sure as a pos­si­ble expla­na­tion for why the Court then…

On May 7, the Constitution Project released a new report, Irreversible Error, call­ing for reforms in many aspects of the death penal­ty sys­tem. The Project’s Death Penalty Committee, which con­sists of renowned experts on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, made sug­ges­tions for reduc­ing the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent and improv­ing the fair­ness of cap­i­tal cas­es from arrest and inter­ro­ga­tion, through pros­e­cu­tion and appeals, to the execution…

A recent sur­vey by the Kinder Institute of Houston, Texas, found that more than two-thirds (69%) of area res­i­dents pre­ferred alter­na­tive sen­tences over the death penal­ty, and that num­ber is grow­ing as the pop­u­la­tion becomes more diverse. The sur­vey asked whether per­sons con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der should receive a death sen­tence, life in prison with­out parole, or life with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole after 25 years. Only 28% of respon­dents chose the death…

President Obama has ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to review the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the U.S. fol­low­ing the failed exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma on April 29. The President not­ed con­cerns about inno­cence and racial bias: ​“In the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in this coun­try, we have seen sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems — racial bias, uneven appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, you know, sit­u­a­tions in which there were…