Publications & Testimony

National and local media have focused sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion on DPIC’s recent 2013 Year End Report. Coverage has includ­ed pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, CNN, on the wires of the Associated Press and Reuters, and in hun­dreds of oth­er arti­cles and edi­to­ri­als. Papers high­light­ed the main theme of…

Jeffrey Toobin, writ­ing in The New Yorker, used the cur­rent scram­ble among states to pro­cure the drugs for lethal injec­tions as a par­a­digm of the much longer effort to make the death penal­ty palat­able to the American pub­lic. ​“The sto­ry of the death penal­ty in this coun­try,” he wrote, ​“illus­trates a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly American faith in a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion to any prob­lem.” However, Toobin con­clud­ed, tech­nol­o­gy can not cov­er up the broad­er prob­lems of capital…

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A new report from Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights col­lects the sto­ries of fam­i­lies who have had a loved one mur­dered who was in law enforce­ment. The fam­i­lies dis­cuss the pres­sure they faced to demand the death penal­ty as pun­ish­ment, their efforts to pre­vent more vio­lence, and their evolv­ing views on the death penal­ty. Kathy Dillon, whose father was mur­dered in 1974 while on duty as a New York State Trooper, said, “[I]n the case of my father’s mur­der, the death…

As an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, Dr. Joel Zivot applied some of the same drugs in oper­at­ing rooms as are used in exe­cu­tions in the U.S. He admired their life-sav­ing qual­i­ties for patients, but bri­dled at their use in tak­ing lives. Writing recent­ly in USA Today, he cau­tioned against this ​“poi­so­nous” use of med­i­cines, say­ing, ​“States may choose to exe­cute their cit­i­zens, but when they employ lethal injec­tion, they are not prac­tic­ing med­i­cine. They are usurp­ing the tools and…

In a recent op-ed in the Denver Post, Colorado defense attor­ney David Lane argued that exam­ples of the state with­hold­ing impor­tant evi­dence in cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es should be grounds for recon­sid­er­ing the death penal­ty: ​“The death penal­ty in Colorado is a fatal­ly flawed gov­ern­ment pro­gram. The alter­na­tive is life with no pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Jurors for many years have expressed a pref­er­ence for that severe sanc­tion, which is actu­al­ly less cost­ly than the death…

On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly reversed a Kansas Supreme Court rul­ing that had grant­ed relief to death row inmate Scott Cheever. The Kansas court had held that Cheever’s 5^th Amendment right against self-incrim­i­na­tion had been vio­lat­ed because tes­ti­mo­ny was giv­en at his sen­tenc­ing hear­ing by a psy­chi­a­trist who exam­ined Cheever pur­suant to a court order. Cheever had claimed he was under the influ­ence of drugs at the time of the crime. The…

In a let­ter to Texas offi­cials, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged a review of the con­vic­tion of Edgar Arias Tamayo, a Mexican cit­i­zen sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in January 2014. Tamayo was not noti­fied of his right to con­tact the Mexican Consulate, a vio­la­tion of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty that the U.S. has signed and rat­i­fied. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. to review the con­vic­tions of Tamayo and…

Andrew Cohen, writ­ing in The Atlantic, recent­ly exam­ined the evo­lu­tion in think­ing on the death penal­ty among Supreme Court Justices. Cohen not­ed that Justices John Paul Stevens (pic­tured), Lewis Powell, and Harry Blackmun all upheld new death-penal­ty statutes in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), there­by ush­er­ing in a return to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. All three, how­ev­er, lat­er said the death penal­ty under these stat­ues was not being applied con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly. Justice…

December 10 is Human Rights Day, the 65^th anniver­sary of the United Nations’ adop­tion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To mark this anniver­sary, for­mer New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (pic­tured) joined Federico Mayor, President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, in draw­ing atten­tion to the steady decline inter­na­tion­al­ly in the use of the death penal­ty. As gov­er­nor, Richardson…