Publications & Testimony

In a recent op-ed in The Hill, three leading pharmacists wrote in support of the resolution by the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), discouraging pharmacist participation in executions. Leonard Edloe, former CEO of Edloe’s Professional Pharmacies, William Fassett (pictured), professor emeritus of pharmacology at Washington State University, and Philip Hantsen, professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Pharmacy, wrote, “The healthcare community is now united in…

(Click image to enlarge) The Atlantic reports that death sentences are heavily concentrated in a small number of heavy-use counties. According to DePaul University law professor Robert J. Smith, “1 percent of counties accounts for roughly 44 percent of all death sentences” since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. Death-sentencing rates in those counties are not a product of their population or murder rates, Smith points out. For example, from 2004 to 2009, “Miami-Dade County…

(Click here to enlarge image). According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, Pennsylvania is less likely to execute a death row inmate than any other state that has carried out any executions. A Reading Eagle analysis of BJS data from 1973 through 2013 shows that the Commonwealth has executed fewer than 1% of all death-sentenced defendants since 1973, with execution the least likely of 5 possible outcomes for people sentenced to die. Nationally, 16% of those sentenced to death have been executed.

(Click on image to enlarge). The Federal Bureau of Investigation has formally acknowledged that examiners from the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit for decades provided flawed forensic testimony purportedly matching crime scene hair evidence to the hair of defendants charged with those crimes. As part of an ongoing review of inaccurate forensic evidence, the FBI admitted that, in the 268 trials examined so far, its forensic experts systematically overstated the certainty of…

(Click image to enlarge) Polls released this week by Pew Research Center and CBS News show that public support for the death penalty has declined to near historic lows. Both polls reported that 56% of Americans support the death penalty. That is the lowest level of support ever recorded by the CBS News poll, and near the lowest level reported by Pew in the last 40 years. The Pew poll examined levels of support by political party and found that the decline in support for the death penalty is…

On April 10, the Tennessee Supreme Court canceled the execution dates for all four Tennessee death-row inmates currently under death warrant, and returned their cases to the lower courts to address the inmates’ challenges to the state’s lethal injection procedures. The executions had been scheduled for October 2015 through March 2016. Tennessee has not carried out an execution since 2009, but the state announced in 2013 that it would switch from a three-drug lethal injection protocol to a…

UPDATE: “Family members of two Massachusetts murder victims, including the police officer who was killed by the Tsarnaevs, have spoken out concerning their views on the sentence they believe should be imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bombing. Now Bill and Denise Richards, parents of 8‑year-old Martin Richards, the youngest victim killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, have added their voices and called on federal prosecutors to drop the death penalty in exchange for…

In an editorial on April 13, the New York Times described the death penalty as “cruel, immoral, and ineffective at reducing crime” and called it “so riddled with error that no civilized nation should tolerate its use.” The Times described how prosecutorial misconduct and an “all-too-common mind-set to win at all costs” played a substantial role in the convictions of many of the 152 innocent men and women who have been exonerated after beingly wrongly sent to death row and had contributed to the…

The latest edition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA, which reports state-by-state information on death rows across the country, reflects a more than 12% decline in the size of death row nationwide. The Winter 2015 edition reports that 3,019 inmates were on America’s death rows as of December 31, 2014, down 12.6% from the 3,455 men and women reported ten years earlier. The racial demographics of death row are now 43% white, 42% black, and 13% Latino/Latina. California continued to…

During his tenure as Attorney General of Virginia from 1998 to 2001, that state executed 36 people. Now Mark Earley opposes the death penalty. The former Attorney General recently discussed his change of opinion in an article for the University of Richmond Law Review. He wrote, “If you believe that the government always ‘gets it right,’ never makes serious mistakes, and is never tainted with corruption, then you can be comfortable supporting the death penalty.” He said, “Overseeing a legal…