Publications & Testimony

One of the nation’s lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic experts on the death penal­ty has writ­ten a new arti­cle describ­ing how the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing lethal injec­tions has great­ly inten­si­fied since the Supreme Court’s rul­ing on the sub­ject in 2008 (Baze v. Rees). Deborah Denno, a law pro­fes­sor at Fordham University, ana­lyzed over 300 court deci­sions in the last five years cit­ing Baze. She found there have been more changes in lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols in that time than in…

On September 19 the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed a low­er court’s dis­missal of all charges against Thomas Keenan, a for­mer death row inmate sen­tenced to death for a 1988 mur­der. The appeals court also barred the state from retry­ing Keenan. His co-defen­dant, Joseph D’Ambrosio, was ful­ly exon­er­at­ed in 2012 based on sim­i­lar state mis­con­duct to that found in Keenan’s tri­al. Keenan’s con­vic­tion was over­turned by a U.S. District Court in 2012…

Perspectives on Capital Punishment in America is a col­lec­tion of short schol­ar­ly pieces on the death penal­ty sys­tem. The essays stem from the late Justice Thurgood Marshall’s belief that ​“death is dif­fer­ent” and thus must be treat­ed spe­cial­ly with­in the judi­cial sys­tem. The book exam­ines issues such as wrong­ful con­vic­tions in cap­i­tal cas­es, death qual­i­fi­ca­tion of jurors, the cost of the death penal­ty, felony mur­der rules, and the death penal­ty’s place in the Uniform…

A recent poll spon­sored by the Boston Globe found that a sig­nif­i­cant major­i­ty of Boston res­i­dents favor life with­out parole over the death penal­ty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect. Fifty-sev­en per­cent (57%) of respon­dents sup­port­ed a sen­tence of life with­out parole if Tsarnaev is con­vict­ed, com­pared with only 33% who favored the death penal­ty. Sixty-one (61) per­cent of Democrats and 49% of Republicans (a plu­ral­i­ty) sup­port­ed a sen­tence of…

On September 18, the American Bar Association​’s Death Penalty Due Process Review Project released its lat­est report, focus­ing on the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of Texas​’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The report found: ​“In many areas, Texas appears out of step with bet­ter prac­tices imple­ment­ed in oth­er cap­i­tal juris­dic­tions, fails to rely upon sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly reli­able meth­ods and process­es in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty, and pro­vides the pub­lic with inadequate…

Rob Warden, who is step­ping down as the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, recent­ly spoke about the work of find­ing and free­ing inno­cent defen­dants. Warden helped exon­er­ate almost 60 peo­ple, includ­ing many who had been sen­tenced to death. He not­ed that some of the suc­cess of the Center was the result of tim­ing: ​“Part of it was the for­tu­itous advent of DNA foren­sic tech­nol­o­gy, which sud­den­ly showed that many peo­ple had been wrongfully…

In a recent op-ed, the co-author of a key study on the via­bil­i­ty of California’s death penal­ty ana­lyzed the recent dra­mat­ic shift in pub­lic opin­ion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. According to Paula Mitchell, adjunct pro­fes­sor at Loyola of Los Angeles Law School, decades of polling showed about two-thirds of Californians sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, but the 2012 ref­er­en­dum to repeal the law lost by just 4 per­cent­age points (52%-48%).

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row, USA shows a con­tin­u­a­tion of the down­ward trend in the over­all death row pop­u­la­tion, though California (731 inmates) – the state with the largest death row – record­ed an increase. The next lead­ing states were Florida (412), Texas (298), Pennsylvania (198), and Alabama (197), all of which reg­is­tered decreas­es on death row.

On September 11, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held (5 – 4) that a tri­al court ille­gal­ly ordered the forcible med­ica­tion of a men­tal­ly ill death row inmate for the pur­pose of ren­der­ing him com­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. The case involves Steven Staley, whose men­tal health began to dete­ri­o­rate when he entered death row in 1991. He received an exe­cu­tion date in 2006, but was deemed too ill to be exe­cut­ed. A court ordered that his para­noid schiz­o­phre­nia be…

Steve Monks is a ​“staunch con­ser­v­a­tive” and for­mer Chair of the Durham County, North Carolina, Republican Party. In an op-ed in the News & Observer, he recent­ly argued that the state would save mon­ey and make soci­ety safer by replac­ing the death penal­ty with life with­out parole. He not­ed that the homi­cide rate in the state dropped 3.8% from 2011 to 2012, a time when no one was exe­cut­ed and no one even sen­tenced to death. In…