Publications & Testimony

On March 24, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear argu­ments in Jennings v. Stephens (No. 13 – 7211), a Texas death penal­ty case involv­ing inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel. In his request for fed­er­al relief from his death sen­tence, Robert Jennings cit­ed three instances in which his tri­al lawyers failed to ade­quate­ly rep­re­sent him. A U.S. District Court grant­ed him relief on two of those claims (includ­ing fail­ure to present evi­dence of his men­tal problems),…

In his book, ​“Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned,” Richard Jaffe explores the prob­lems of the American death penal­ty sys­tem through his expe­ri­ence as a cap­i­tal defense attor­ney in Alabama. During the past twen­ty years, Jaffe has helped secure the release of three death row inmates: Randall Padgett and Gary Drinkard, who were ful­ly exon­er­at­ed, and James Cochran, who was cleared of mur­der charges, but plead­ed guilty to a relat­ed robbery…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Jackson Free Press in Mississippi called for a halt to the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Michelle Byrom, say­ing she is ​“clear­ly not guilty of the crime for which the state plans to exe­cute her next week.” The edi­to­r­i­al not­ed that Byrom’s son had con­fessed to the crime four times.” He said the sto­ry he orig­i­nal­ly told sher­iffs impli­cat­ing his moth­er was made up because he was ​“scared, con­fused and high” when he was inter­ro­gat­ed. The…

Michelle Byrom is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Mississippi on March 27 for con­spir­ing to mur­der her hus­band, Edward Byrom, Sr. Her son, Edward Byrom, Jr., known as Junior, con­fessed to the crime on mul­ti­ple occa­sions, and wrote that he lied when he told police his moth­er and a friend were involved. ​“I was so scared, con­fused, and high, I just start­ed spit­ting the first thought out, which turned in to this big con­spir­a­cy thing, for mon­ey, which was all BS,…

A new, but lim­it­ed, study of the costs of the death penal­ty in Idaho found that cap­i­tal cas­es are more cost­ly and take much more time to resolve than non-cap­i­tal cas­es. One mea­sure of death-penal­ty costs was reflect­ed in the time spent by attor­neys han­dling appeals. The State Appellate Public Defenders office spent about 44 times more time on a typ­i­cal death penal­ty appeal than on a life sen­tence appeal (almost 8,000 hours per cap­i­tal defen­dant com­pared to about 180 hours per…

(UPDATE: The exe­cu­tions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner were stayed until April 22 and 29 respec­tive­ly.) Oklahoma does not have the nec­es­sary drugs to car­ry out the upcom­ing exe­cu­tions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner, sched­uled for March 20 and 26. According to a brief filed on behalf of the Department of Corrections, the depart­ment has made a ​“Herculean effort” to obtain pen­to­bar­bi­tal and vecuro­ni­um bro­mide for the lethal injec­tions, but still lacks a sup­ply of…

In a lec­ture at the Widener University School of Law, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Saylor crit­i­cized the poor state of death penal­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Pennsylvania. He offered numer­ous cas­es in which death sen­tences were over­turned because attor­neys had failed to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence to the jury. Quoting from a spe­cial con­cur­rence he wrote on a cap­i­tal case involv­ing inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, he said, ​“Of great­est concern,…

The Georgia State Bar’s con­sti­tu­tion­al sym­po­sium recent­ly staged a reen­act­ment of Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court case that led to the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of the death penal­ty in 1972. Stephen Bright (pic­tured), pres­i­dent of the Southern Center for Human Rights, played the role of Anthony Amsterdam, who argued on behalf of death row inmates in two of the four cas­es that the Court decid­ed in Furman. The roles of the jus­tices were…

In his Sidebar col­umn in the N.Y. Times, Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak recent­ly dis­cussed the con­cerns about states deny­ing death row inmates infor­ma­tion about how they will be exe­cut­ed. Liptak high­light­ed the recent exe­cu­tion of Michael Taylor in Missouri, where the state has made the phar­ma­cy pro­vid­ing the drugs for lethal injec­tion part of its ​“exe­cu­tion team,” thus obscur­ing any fail­ings the phar­ma­cy may have. This secretive…

Attorneys rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­ly of George Stinney, Jr., recent­ly filed a request for a posthu­mous exon­er­a­tion of Mr. Stinney, the youngest per­son exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in the 20^th…