Publications & Testimony

A com­mit­tee empan­eled by the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court made three pre­lim­i­nary rec­om­men­da­tions at its June meet­ing for reform­ing the state’s death penal­ty. The pan­el, which con­sists of pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, judges, and aca­d­e­m­ic experts, vot­ed to rec­om­mend a reduc­tion in the scope of crimes eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, the cre­ation of a statewide pan­el to decide on seek­ing a death sen­tence, and the enact­ment of a Racial Justice Act. The restric­tion of…

UPDATE: Warren Hill was grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion by a Georgia court just hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion on July 15. A hear­ing is sched­uled for July 18 to con­sid­er chal­lenges to a new state law that shields the iden­ti­ty of the lethal injec­tion drug’s man­u­fac­tur­er and the pre­scrib­ing physi­cian from the pub­lic. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 15, 2013). As a peti­tion on behalf of Georgia death row inmate Warren…

On June 10, California announced it would no longer try to defend its cur­rent lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. In May, a court rul­ing inval­i­dat­ed the state’s three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col because state offi­cials failed to fol­low admin­is­tra­tive rules in adopt­ing the pro­to­col. Governor Jerry Brown and oth­er offi­cials will instead pro­ceed with devel­op­ing a sin­gle-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col sim­i­lar to those adopt­ed recent­ly in states like Ohio, Arizona, and Washington.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel recent­ly said the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem was ​“com­plete­ly bro­ken” and rec­om­mend­ed it be abol­ished if the state’s exe­cu­tion method isn’t changed. McDaniel said, ​“It’s time for the pol­i­cy mak­ers of Arkansas to say, ​‘Do we con­tin­ue with a bro­ken sys­tem and throw­ing mon­ey and resources at essen­tial­ly point­less lit­i­ga­tion, or do we mod­i­fy the sys­tem?’ And there’s only real­ly two mod­i­fi­ca­tions that I see available —…

In the first half of 2013, six states car­ried out 18 exe­cu­tions. In the same peri­od last year, there were 23 exe­cu­tions in 8 states. The annu­al num­ber of exe­cu­tions has declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly from its peak in 1999, when 98 peo­ple were put to death. There were 43 exe­cu­tions in 2011 and 2012. Sixteen of this year’s exe­cu­tions (89%) have been in the South, with near­ly half in Texas (8). Eight of the defen­dants exe­cut­ed so far this year were black, and ten were white.

The lat­est edi­tion of the Yale Law Journal fea­tures essays com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50^th anniver­sary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the land­mark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion guar­an­tee­ing all crim­i­nal defen­dants a right to an attor­ney. The col­lec­tion of essays from lead­ing legal experts includes an arti­cle by Stephen Bright and Sia Sanneh, titled ​“Fifty Years of Defiance and Resistance After Gideon v. Wainwright,” argu­ing that the criminal…

Timothy McGinty, the Chief Prosecutor of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, is encour­ag­ing the Ohio Parole Board to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for death row inmate Billy Slagle (pic­tured). Slagle was sen­tenced to death in 1988 for the mur­der of his neigh­bor, Mari Ann Pope. At the time of the mur­der, Slagle was only 18 years old, which, along with Slagle’s prob­lems of sub­stance abuse and his record of good behav­ior in prison, has now led the…

The American Bar Association recent­ly released its annu­al report, The State of Criminal Justice-2013, includ­ing a chap­ter on devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. In that chap­ter, author Ronald Tabak focus­es on the con­tin­u­ing decline in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions, recent inno­cence cas­es, and new voic­es who have spo­ken out about the death penal­ty. The chap­ter high­lights recent research on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing stud­ies that found racial…

At a recent event spon­sored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon encour­aged mem­ber nations to work towards end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Mr. Ban par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on the risk of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions, say­ing, ​“We have a duty to pre­vent inno­cent peo­ple from pay­ing the ulti­mate price for mis­car­riages of jus­tice. The most sen­si­ble way is to end the death penal­ty.” The event – ​“Moving away from the death penal­ty – Wrongful…

On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear argu­ments in White v. Woodall, a death penal­ty case from Kentucky, to be heard dur­ing the Court’s next term. Robert Woodall plead­ed guilty to cap­i­tal mur­der and chose not to tes­ti­fy in the sen­tenc­ing phase of his tri­al. His attor­neys request­ed that the judge instruct the jury not to draw any adverse infer­ences from Woodall’s deci­sion not to tes­ti­fy on his own behalf, but the request was denied because the judge…