Publications & Testimony

Family mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims gath­ered out­side a cour­t­house in Castle Rock, Colorado, in sup­port of Robert Autobee, whose son was mur­dered, but who oppos­es the death penal­ty for the per­pe­tra­tor. Inside the cour­t­house, jury selec­tion was under­way in the tri­al of Edward Montour, who is accused of mur­der­ing cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer Eric Autobee (pic­tured), Robert’s son. Montour orig­i­nal­ly plead­ed guilty and was sen­tenced to death, but his con­vic­tion was…

On January 7, the Boston Bar Association, rep­re­sent­ing more than 10,000 lawyers, released a state­ment oppos­ing the use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The Association already had a long­stand­ing posi­tion against the death penal­ty in state cas­es. Paul T. Dacier (pic­tured), the President of the Boston Bar, said, ​“Without equiv­o­ca­tion, the death penal­ty has no place in the fair admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice and makes no sense on a prac­ti­cal lev­el.” The orga­ni­za­tion’s new stance was…

In a recent arti­cle in the Atlantic, Marc Bookman com­pared the path through the jus­tice sys­tem of two co-defen­dants sen­tenced to death in Florida after com­mit­ting mur­der in 1977. Beauford White was elec­tro­cut­ed in 1987, despite his tri­al jury vot­ing 12 – 0 for a life sen­tence. The tri­al judge over­rode that rec­om­men­da­tion and imposed death. White’s co-defen­dant, John Ferguson, lived for anoth­er 26 years before being exe­cut­ed in 2013.

Ronald George is a for­mer Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, who reg­u­lar­ly upheld death sen­tences. However, in his recent book, Chief: The Quest for Justice in California, he ques­tioned the geo­graph­i­cal dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the state. In his chap­ter, ​“Reforming the Judicial System,” he wrote, ​“You could have the exact same crime, let’s say a straight­for­ward street rob­bery homi­cide, result in the seeking…

An inves­ti­ga­tion by St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon found that the source of Missouri​’s lethal injec­tion drug, pen­to­bar­bi­tal, is a com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy in Oklahoma, not licensed to sell drugs in Missouri. Until very recent­ly, com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies have been reg­u­lat­ed only by state phar­ma­cy boards, not by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Thus, a phar­ma­cy in Oklahoma may be held to dif­fer­ent stan­dards than one in…

As the new year begins, there are sev­er­al notable events relat­ed to the death penal­ty like­ly to occur in the next few months. The first exe­cu­tion of the year is sched­uled for January 7 in Florida. The exe­cu­tion of Askari Muhammad had orig­i­nal­ly been sched­uled for December 3, 2013, but was stayed due to a chal­lenge to the state’s new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The Florida Supreme Court approved the new pro­to­col, and the exe­cu­tion was resched­uled, though legal chal­lenges are…

Some legal and psy­chi­atric experts have con­clud­ed that vet­er­ans with post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der should be inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. In an arti­cle in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, men­tal health experts Drs. Hal Wortzel and David Arciniegas wrote, ​“The tragedy of the wound­ed com­bat vet­er­an who faces exe­cu­tion by the nation he has served seems to be an avoid­able one, and we, as a soci­ety, should take action to ensure that it does not hap­pen.” A 2008…

In a recent op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal, the pres­i­dent of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association dis­cussed the high costs of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, Barbara Mandel detailed the expens­es involved in the recent fed­er­al tri­al of John McCluskey. He was sen­tenced to life with­out parole, an out­come that Mandel wrote, ​“occurred years and at least a mil­lion dol­lars lat­er than it should have.” According to the op-ed, McCluskey had…

Mexican for­eign min­is­ter José Antonio Meade Kuribreña recent­ly sent let­ters to Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles request­ing that the exe­cu­tion of Edgar Arias Tamayo, a Mexican cit­i­zen, be post­poned or com­mut­ed. Tamayo is cur­rent­ly on death row in Texas and is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion for on January 22, 2014. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. to…