Publications & Testimony

Judge Boyce Martin took the occa­sion of his final death-penal­ty deci­sion from the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals to sharply crit­i­cize cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in this coun­try. While uphold­ing the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of the defen­dant, Harold Nichols, Judge Martin said, ​“I con­tin­ue to con­demn the use of the death penal­ty as an arbi­trary, biased, and bro­ken crim­i­nal jus­tice tool.” He not­ed that the many years since Nichols’s con­vic­tion in 1990 have con­sumed ​“count­less…

UPDATE: Ferguson was exe­cut­ed on Aug. 5. Florida has set an August 5 exe­cu­tion date for John Ferguson, a death row inmate who has suf­fered from severe men­tal ill­ness for more than four decades. As far back as 1965, Ferguson was found to expe­ri­ence visu­al hal­lu­ci­na­tions. He was sent to men­tal insti­tu­tions and was diag­nosed as para­noid schiz­o­phrenic, delu­sion­al, and aggres­sive. In 1975, a men­tal health doc­tor described Ferguson as ​“dan­ger­ous and can­not be…

After ear­li­er vot­ing to deny death row inmate Willie Manning access to DNA test­ing, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed itself on July 23 and cleared the way for the test­ing of evi­dence in Manning’s case. Manning has main­tained his inno­cence since his 1994 con­vic­tion of the mur­ders of two col­lege stu­dents. His renewed request for test­ing was sup­port­ed by let­ters from the Department of Justice and the FBI, which are con­duct­ing a review of foren­sic testimony…

On July 24, Ronell Wilson was re-sen­tenced to death by a fed­er­al jury in New York. Despite numer­ous cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions by the Department of Justice, no oth­er per­son in the state has been giv­en the death penal­ty since the fed­er­al death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1988. New York’s state death penal­ty law was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by the state Court of Appeals in 2004. By 2007, all sev­en of those sen­tenced to death under the state law had their sen­tences overturned.

A new report from the American Civil Liberties Union, ​“A Death Before Dying: Solitary Confinement on Death Row,” con­tains a sur­vey of the con­di­tions on death rows across the coun­try and offers a com­pre­hen­sive review of the seri­ous impli­ca­tions of sub­ject­ing inmates to soli­tary con­fine­ment. The report reveals that most death row pris­on­ers are housed in tiny cells, rang­ing from 36 – 100 square feet, rough­ly the size of an aver­age bath­room; 93% of states lock up their death row…

On July 23, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unan­i­mous­ly affirmed a low­er court rul­ing that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) failed to ful­fill its duties under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) when it per­mit­ted with­out inspec­tion the impor­ta­tion of for­eign drugs for use in lethal injec­tions. The Court con­clud­ed, ​“The FDCA impos­es manda­to­ry duties upon the agency charged with its enforce­ment. The FDA act­ed in…

Andrew Lackey is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Alabama on July 25, despite suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness his entire life. Lackey asked for an exe­cu­tion date, even though nei­ther his state nor fed­er­al appeals have been com­plet­ed. Despite exten­sive evi­dence of seri­ous men­tal prob­lems, the tri­al judge refused to order an expert com­pe­ten­cy eval­u­a­tion, failed to inquire about med­ica­tions he is tak­ing and how they affect his men­tal state, and did not ask state…

On July 18, a Georgia Superior Court judge ruled that the state’s new law shield­ing the source of lethal injec­tion drugs inter­fered with Warren Hill​’s right to chal­lenge his method of exe­cu­tion and is there­fore prob­a­bly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. According to the law, infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to drugs used in exe­cu­tions is clas­si­fied as ​“con­fi­den­tial state secrets” and can­not be dis­closed. Judge Gail S. Tusan said the law ” ​“To be exe­cut­ed with­out being…

A Federal Bureau of Investigation review of more than 21,000 cas­es has revealed 27 death penal­ty cas­es in which the FBI’s foren­sic experts may have exag­ger­at­ed the sci­en­tif­ic con­clu­sions that could be drawn from their tes­ti­mo­ny, mis­tak­en­ly link­ing defen­dants to crimes they may not have com­mit­ted. It is pos­si­ble that some of these cas­es involve inmates who have already been exe­cut­ed. Under par­tic­u­lar scruti­ny is tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing hair evi­dence. Although FBI laboratory…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics recent­ly released its annu­al review of the death penal­ty in the U.S., focus­ing on 2011. The report not­ed the con­tin­ued decline in the use of the death penal­ty in recent years. In 2011, 80 new inmates were received under sen­tence of death, the low­est num­ber since 1973, and a 27% decrease from the year before. Executions also declined to 43, com­pared with 46 in 2010. The aver­age time between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion in 2011 was 16.5 years, 20…