Publications & Testimony

Two new studies suggest that a defendant’s facial appearance predicts whether he is sentenced to life or to death, regardless of actual guilt or innocence. A study of Florida inmates published in the July 15 edition of Psychological Science finds that the perceived degree of trustworthiness of a defendant’s face predicted which of the two sentences a defendant who has been convicted of murder ultimately received. A follow-up study also showed that the link between perceived untrustworthiness…

Citing a backlash from his controversial statements about the death penalty, Dale Cox (pictured), the Interim District Attorney of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, announced on July 14 that he will not run for District Attorney this fall. Nearly half of the death sentences imposed in Louisiana in the last five years have come from Caddo Parish. Cox himself has prosecuted one third of the Louisiana cases that have resulted in death sentences since 2010. In March 2015, Cox told The Shreveport Times…

In two separate guest columns for The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), four state legislators urged an end to the death penalty in Tennessee. State Representatives Steve McManus (top left) and Mark White (top right), both Republicans, called capital punishment, “a lousy return on our investment.” Estimating that Tennessee’s death penalty is similar in costs to North Carolina’s $11 million-per-year system, they listed some alternative uses for death penalty funds. “270 patrol officers. 361 state…

A recent article in The Economist highlights continuing long-term international trends away from the death penalty. Since December, three countries — Fiji, Madagascar, and Suriname — have abolished the death penalty, increasing the number of abolitionist countries to above 100. In December, 117 countries voted to support a United Nations resolution for an international moratorium on executions. The article notes a few outlier countries, including the United States and China, in which executions…

A majority of Texas death row prisoners who voluntarily responded to a recent survey by the Texas Observer reported having experienced abuse or other trauma as children. The survey results are consistent with the findings of academic studies that have repeatedly documented high rates of childhood abuse among those sentenced to death. The Texas Observer survey found that 22 of the 41 death row prisoners who responded (54%) volunteered having experienced “violent or abusive” childhoods. An…

David Keaton, the first man exonerated from death row in the modern era of the death penalty (1973-present), died on July 3 at the age of 63. Keaton was convicted and sentenced to death in Florida in 1971 for the murder of an off-duty police officer. His conviction was based on a coerced confession and erroneous eyewitness testimony. In 1973, the actual perpetrator was discovered because of new evidence, and Keaton was exonerated. In 2003, Keaton became a founding member of Witness To…

Highlighting the recent abolition of the death penalty in Nebraska and concerns about wrongful convictions, National Urban League President Marc H. Morial (pictured) called for an end to executions. In an op-ed for The Philadelphia Tribune, Morial cited declining public support for the death penalty: “56 percent of Americans support the death penalty, this from a high of almost 80 percent in the mid-90s,” he said. He also emphasized the growing conservative opposition to the death penalty…

A federal judge in Louisiana has delayed five executions until at least July 2016 as state officials struggle to determine how to conduct executions using lethal injection. Christopher Sepulvado, a death row inmate whose execution has been rescheduled several times over the last two years, is challenging the constitutionality of Louisiana’s execution method. The Department of Corrections requested that a hearing related to Sepulvado’s challenge be put on hold because, “it would be a waste of…

Through the lens of a 1927 murder and the ensuing trials of three suspects, An Evil Day in Georgia examines the death penalty system in Prohibition-era Georgia. James Hugh Moss, a black man, and Clifford Thompson, a white man, both from Tennessee, were accused of the murder of store owner Coleman Osborn in rural north Georgia. Thought to be involved in the illegal interstate trade of alcohol, they were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death on circumstantial evidence within a month of the…

In a dissenting opinion in Glossip v. Gross, Justice Stephen Breyer (pictured), joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, provided a sweeping analysis of why he believes the death penalty in the United States may be unconstitutional and called for a “full briefing” on “whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.” Justice Breyer wrote that “Nearly 40 years ago, this Court upheld the death penalty under statutes that, in the Court’s view, contained safeguards sufficient to ensure that the…