Publications & Testimony

In Ford v. Wainwright (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court banned the exe­cu­tion of inmates who were insane. In a dis­sent­ing opin­ion, Justice Rehnquist and Chief Justice Burger warned that the major­i­ty deci­sion ​“offers an invi­ta­tion to those who have noth­ing to lose…to advance entire­ly spu­ri­ous claims of insan­i­ty.” A new study has exam­ined cas­es since 1986 in which death row inmates filed claims of men­tal incom­pe­tence and found that the del­uge of spurious…

Defending a death penal­ty case costs about four times as much as defend­ing a case where the death penal­ty is not sought, accord­ing to a new study by the Kansas Judicial Council. Examining 34 poten­tial death-penal­ty cas­es from 2004 – 2011, the study found that defense costs for death penal­ty tri­als aver­aged $395,762 per case, com­pared to $98,963 per case when the death penal­ty was not sought. Costs incurred by the tri­al court showed a sim­i­lar dis­par­i­ty: $72,530 for cas­es with…

Ken Rose has rep­re­sent­ed peo­ple con­demned to death in the south for 30 years and recent­ly described his expe­ri­ence with this ​“flawed sys­tem:” ​“The sys­tem reflects our bias­es and blind spots,” he said. ​“Just like us, it is sus­cep­ti­ble to error and prej­u­dice and, some­times, an indis­crim­i­nate desire for revenge. Like our coun­try, it favors the priv­i­leged and takes the heav­i­est toll on the poor and men­tal­ly ill.” As an exam­ple, Rose told the sto­ry of one of his clients, Leo…

Two recent reports released in Ohio show a decline in the use of the death penal­ty, with one of the reports rais­ing con­cerns about the fair­ness of the sys­tem. The num­ber of death-penal­ty cas­es filed in Ohio in 2013 was the low­est num­ber in over 30 years. The num­ber of cap­i­tal indict­ments was down 28% from 2012 and 63% from 2011, accord­ing to a report from Ohioans to Stop Executions, ​“The Death Lottery: How Race and Geography Determine Who Goes to Ohio’s Death…

On March 27, a court in Japan sus­pend­ed the death sen­tence and ordered the release and retri­al of Iwao Hakamada, who had been impris­oned for 48 years, most­ly on death row. The 78-year-old man is the world’s longest-serv­ing death row inmate. Presiding judge Hiroaki Murayama said, ​“It is unbear­ably unjust to pro­long deten­tion of the defen­dant any fur­ther. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of his inno­cence has become clear to a respectable degree.” Hakamada was con­vict­ed of the…

In a case in which the state’s Attorney General had asked for an exe­cu­tion date of March 27, the Mississippi Supreme Court instead threw out Michelle Byrom​’s mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence and ordered a new tri­al just four days lat­er. The case was plagued with numer­ous prob­lems, includ­ing inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion, crit­i­cal evi­dence not pre­sent­ed to the jury, con­fes­sions by anoth­er defen­dant, and the pros­e­cu­tion’s lack of con­fi­dence in its own sto­ry of…

Further analy­sis of a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that sup­port for the death penal­ty was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er among some racial and eth­nic minori­ties than for the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. More Hispanics oppose the death penal­ty (50%) than sup­port it (40%), and the same is true of African Americans, with only about a third (36%) favor­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and a major­i­ty (55%) oppos­ing it. Democrats are about even­ly split, with 45% in favor and 47%…

Amnesty International recent­ly released its annu­al report on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment around the world, not­ing, ​“Developments in the world­wide use of the death penal­ty in 2013 con­firmed that its appli­ca­tion is con­fined to a small minor­i­ty of coun­tries.” As illus­trat­ed in the chart at left, over the past decade there has been an increase in the num­ber of coun­tries abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty and a decrease in coun­tries car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions. Because exe­cu­tions in China remain a…

Two for­mer jus­tices of the New Hampshire Supreme Court recent­ly voiced their sup­port for repeal­ing the death penal­ty. In an op-ed, Joseph Nadeau (l.) and John Broderick (r.) empha­sized the death penal­ty’s lack of deter­rent effect, say­ing, ​“New Hampshire has not exe­cut­ed any­one for three quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry. Yet, it reg­is­tered the sec­ond low­est mur­der rate in the nation every year of this cen­tu­ry.” Murder rates were high­er in heavy-use death penal­ty states, they not­ed. The…

On March 26, Oklahoma County District Judge Patricia Parrish held that the state’s lethal injec­tion secre­cy law vio­lates the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to due process of inmates slat­ed for exe­cu­tion. ​“I think that the secre­cy statute is a vio­la­tion of due process because access to the courts has been denied,” she said, say­ing the case was not ​“even a close call.” Death row inmates Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner chal­lenged the law, which bans…