Publications & Testimony

The Supreme Court of Delaware voted unanimously on July 27 to suspend former Deputy Attorney General R. David Favata as a result of his misconduct during a recent capital trial. With a single dissent as to the length of the suspension, the Court banned Favata from the practice of law for six months and one day for intentional misconduct during the capital trial of Isaiah McCoy. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court overturned McCoy’s conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial…

A recent article in the The New York Times Magazine examines the effects of the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which was intended to streamline and shorten capital appeals. Its title summarizes the statute as “The Law That Keeps People on Death Row Despite Flawed Trials.” Emily Bazelon opens the article with the story of death-row prison Hector Ayala, who was tried before a jury from which prosecutors excluded all 7 black or Latino jurors. The federal appeals court…

Citing the high cost of death penalty appeals and difficulty obtaining custody of an out-of-state prisoner, the Kern County, California District Attorney’s office has agreed to reduce the 1989 death sentence imposed upon Clarence Ray (pictured) to a sentence of life without parole. Ray’s lawyers had filed a petition challenging the constitutionality of his California conviction and death sentence. The parties reached agreement that Ray’s death sentence would be reversed in exchange for his…

Philip Holloway, a CNN legal analyst who has been both a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney, says in a recent op-ed that “it is hard not to question the rationality — indeed the sanity” of the death penalty. Holloway says “there are several practical reasons why the death penalty just doesn’t make sense any longer, if it ever really did in the first place,” and outlines five reasons why he believes the United States should reconsider capital punishment. First, he says that life without…

On July 23, 2014, Arizona’s execution of Joseph Wood was botched, taking nearly two hours from the time the state began injecting him with lethal drugs until he was finally pronounced dead. Witnesses reported that Wood gasped more than 640 times during the course of the execution, and an official report later revealed that he was injected with 15 doses of the execution drugs. Michael Kiefer, a reporter for the Arizona Republic, who witnessed Wood’s execution, described it, saying, “He gulped…

In a recent article for the Georgetown Law Journal, Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit calls for sweeping reforms in the criminal justice system. The former Chief Judge, who was appointed by President Reagan in 1985, outlined a number of “myths” about the legal system, raising questions about the reliability of eyewitness testimony, fingerprint evidence, and even DNA evidence, which can easily be contaminated. Judge Kozinski directed his harshest criticism…

According to Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., a Harvard law professor who taught President Obama and the First Lady when they were law students, the President may be changing his views on capital punishment. Obama has said that he supports executions for “especially horrific” murders, but has also raised concerns about the death penalty. Ogletree said that Obama’s recent focus on racial bias in the criminal justice system, as well as declining public support for the death penalty, may drive the…

A new study by Professor Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill finds stark racial and geographic disparities in the application of the death penalty in Missouri. A majority of Missouri’s executions came from just 2.6% of the state’s counties, mirroring national trends, as 2% of U.S. counties have produced 52% of all executions since 1976. St. Louis County — the home of Ferguson, Missouri — has carried out more executions than any other Missouri jurisdiction. A…

According to a study by the Women Donors Network, 95% of elected prosecutors in the U.S. are white and 79% are white men. An analysis by DPIC of the study’s data further shows that, in states that have the death penalty, 94.5% of elected prosecutors are white. In 9 death penalty states (Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, and Wyoming), 100% of elected prosecutors are white. These numbers reveal that there has been little change from the time of a…