Publications & Testimony

UPDATE: Avila’s exe­cu­tion date has been stayed. Attorneys for Rigoberto Avila have request­ed an evi­den­tiary hear­ing under a new law passed in Texas that allows defen­dants to chal­lenge their con­vic­tions if they were gained through out­dat­ed foren­sic tech­niques. His case will be the first death penal­ty case in the state to be con­sid­ered by the courts under this new leg­is­la­tion. Avila, a Navy vet­ern, was con­vict­ed of mur­der in El Paso in 2001 for…

A recent arti­cle in the ABA Journal drew atten­tion to prob­lems in crime labs across the coun­try that have result­ed in wrong­ful con­vic­tions, includ­ing some in death penal­ty cas­es. Investigations in many states and of the nation­al FBI lab revealed a lack of writ­ten pro­ce­dures, improp­er mix­ing of sam­ples from dif­fer­ent cas­es, improp­er tes­ti­mo­ny, and even fal­si­fi­ca­tion of test results. An Oklahoma City chemist who tes­ti­fied in 23 death penal­ty cas­es was…

The for­tu­itous inves­ti­ga­tion of a case by per­sis­tent jour­nal­ists, rather than the work­ings of the lim­it­ed appel­late process, has led to the exon­er­a­tion of a num­ber of inno­cent indi­vid­u­als. Maurice Possley (l.), a for­mer reporter for the Chicago Tribune, recent­ly wrote how he and fel­low-jour­nal­ist Steve Mills (r.) helped free Daniel Taylor (c.) in Illinois, where he had spent more than 20 years in prison. In 2001, the reporters…

On September 5, the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Due Process Review Project released its lat­est report, focus­ing on the fair­ness and accu­ra­cy of Virginia​’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The assess­ment rec­om­mend­ed changes to the way the state han­dles defen­dants with men­tal retar­da­tion and severe men­tal ill­ness. It also rec­om­mend­ed requir­ing pros­e­cu­tors to dis­close addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about tes­ti­fy­ing wit­ness­es and allow­ing pros­e­cu­tors to with­draw the…

A new study of the cost of the death penal­ty in Colorado revealed that cap­i­tal pro­ceed­ings require six times more days in court and take much longer to resolve than life-with­out-parole (LWOP) cas­es. The study, pub­lished in the University of Denver Criminal Law Review, found that LWOP cas­es required an aver­age of 24.5 days of in-court time, while the death-penal­ty cas­es required 147.6 days. The authors not­ed that select­ing a jury in an LWOP case takes about a…

Raoul Cantera (pic­tured), a for­mer Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, said the state should fol­low the prac­tice of almost every oth­er death penal­ty state and require juries to be unan­i­mous when rec­om­mend­ing a death sen­tence. Cantera also said that a a com­pre­hen­sive review of the state’s death penal­ty is ​“long over­due” and should begin by con­sid­er­ing the rec­om­men­da­tions of a 2006 American Bar Association report on the state’s death penal­ty. Mark…

Anthony Santoro has writ­ten a new book about reli­gious per­spec­tives on the death penal­ty, Exile and Embrace: Contemporary Religious Discourse on the Death Penalty. In describ­ing the book, John D. Bessler, a law pro­fes­sor at the University of Baltimore, said, ​“Santoro tells the sto­ries of every­one from death row chap­lains to blog­gers and Bible study par­tic­i­pants. In dis­cussing trans­gres­sion, ret­ri­bu­tion, and ​‘the oth­er,’ he skill­ful­ly demon­strates how exe­cu­tions say…

A new study test­ing inter­nal atti­tudes and stereo­types among poten­tial jurors in six death penal­ty states may help to explain the racial dis­par­i­ties that per­sist in the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Researchers Justin Levinson (l.), Robert Smith (r.), and Danielle Young test­ed 445 jury-eli­gi­ble indi­vid­u­als and found they har­bored two kinds of racial bias: they main­tained racial stereo­types about Blacks and Whites and made asso­ci­a­tions between the race of an indi­vid­ual and the val­ue of…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recent­ly held that Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti is sane enough to be exe­cut­ed, despite his long his­to­ry of severe men­tal ill­ness. Panetti was sen­tenced to death for the 1992 mur­der of his in-laws. Putting aside Panetti’s bizarre behav­ior in court, the judge allowed him to rep­re­sent him­self at tri­al, where he wore a pur­ple cow­boy suit and sub­poe­naed Jesus Christ and Anne Bancroft as wit­ness­es. Panetti had…

As Ohio pre­pares to change its exe­cu­tion process in October, the Toledo Blade called on the state to stop the secre­cy sur­round­ing the selec­tion of an alter­na­tive to cur­rent lethal injec­tion drugs. The edi­tors wrote, ​“No state should pro­ceed with sched­uled exe­cu­tions until the drug, or mul­tidrug cock­tail, it plans to use has been proven to be humane and effi­cient. The process of chang­ing how peo­ple are exe­cut­ed in Ohio should unfold with far more…