Publications & Testimony

Six retired judges in North Carolina urged the the state Supreme Court to uphold the rul­ings of a low­er court that found racial bias in the use of the death peanl­ty. Former chief jus­tices James Exum and Henry Frye, along with for­mer judges Willis Whichard, Melzer Morgan, Wade Barber and Russell Walker filed a brief in sup­port of inmates whose death sen­tences were reduced to life with­out parole in 2012 under the state’s Racial Justice Act. The Act allowed death row inmates to…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Montgomery Advertiser crit­i­cized a pro­pos­al by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange to speed up death penal­ty appeals. His pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would require two parts of the appeal process to essen­tial­ly run con­cur­rent­ly. The edi­to­r­i­al cau­tioned that lack of ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion for death penal­ty defen­dants would make the accel­er­at­ed process more prob­lem­at­ic. The paper con­clud­ed, ​“Anything that smacks of haste in capital punishment…

On January 10, U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost will con­sid­er a chal­lenge to an exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure in Ohio that has nev­er been used before in the coun­try. Dennis McGuire is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 16, and his attor­neys are argu­ing the new drugs could cause a very painful death, say­ing, ​“McGuire will expe­ri­ence the agony and ter­ror of air hunger as he strug­gles to breathe for five min­utes after [exe­cu­tion­ers] intra­venous­ly inject him with…

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…