Publications & Testimony

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…

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…