Publications & Testimony

On November 21, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to posthu­mous­ly par­don Charles Weems, Andy Wright, and Haywood Patterson, three of the nine ​“Scottsboro Boys,” a group of black teenagers who were charged in 1931 of rap­ing two white women. Eight of the nine defen­dants, includ­ing the three who were recent­ly par­doned, were orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death. The racial injus­tice of the case sparked protests and two U.S. Supreme Court…

Jeff Gerritt is the Deputy Editor of the Toledo Blade, a paper which has sup­port­ed Ohio​’s death penal­ty for years. Disagreeing with the paper’s Editor, Gerritt called for repeal of the death penal­ty in the state, not­ing the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent, ​“Wrongly con­vict­ing any­one con­sti­tutes a hor­ri­ble injus­tice, but exe­cut­ing the wrong per­son elim­i­nates any chance of revers­ing the error. Nationwide, more than 140 peo­ple await­ing exe­cu­tion have been exonerated.

In a 6 – 3 deci­sion on November 20, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a request from death row inmate Duane Buck for a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, despite the fact that racial­ly prej­u­di­cial state­ments had been made dur­ing his tri­al. While the jury was being asked to con­sid­er if Buck would be a future dan­ger to soci­ety, a psy­chol­o­gist tes­ti­fied that African Americans com­mit a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of crim­i­nal offens­es. Buck’s case was one of…

Legal chal­lenges to new lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures have delayed exe­cu­tions in Florida and Missouri this week. Similar chal­lenges halt­ed exe­cu­tions in Georgia in July. On November 18, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a hear­ing on the state’s new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and stayed the exe­cu­tion of Askari Muhammad, who had been sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on December 3. The hear­ing will exam­ine ​“the effi­ca­cy of mida­zo­lam hydrochloride…

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Alabama death row inmate Mario Woodward, who was sen­tenced to death in 2008 despite a jury’s 8 – 4 rec­om­men­da­tion for a life sen­tence. Alabama is one of only three states that allow a judge to over­ride a jury’s sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tion for life to impose a death sen­tence; Florida and Delaware also allow the prac­tice, but death sen­tences by judi­cial over­ride are very rare…

After con­cerns were raised that Missouri’s pro­posed use of the anes­thet­ic propo­fol in exe­cu­tions could endan­ger the sup­ply of that drug for use in surg­eries, Governor Jay Nixon ordered the Department of Corrections to revise the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. Experts say that the new pro­to­col, which hides the source of the pen­to­bar­bi­tal that will now be used in exe­cu­tions, could result in sub­stan­dard drugs being used to exe­cute pris­on­ers. The state plans…

Robert Blecker, a pro­fes­sor at New York Law School, has writ­ten a new book sup­port­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice among the Worst of the Worst. Blecker urges read­ers to con­sid­er his ret­ribu­tivist argu­ment for the death penal­ty: ​“We ret­ribu­tivists view pun­ish­ment dif­fer­ent­ly,” he wrote. ​“We don’t pun­ish to pre­vent crime or remake crim­i­nals. We inflict pain – suf­fer­ing, dis­com­fort – to the degree they deserve to feel it.” He would…

On November 13 Ohio Governor John Kasich stayed the exe­cu­tion of Ronald Phillips less than 24 hours before he was to be die by lethal injec­tion in order to con­sid­er Phillips’ request to donate a kid­ney to his moth­er. Kasich stat­ed, ​“I real­ize this is a bit of unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry for Ohio, but if anoth­er life can be saved by his will­ing­ness to donate his organs and tis­sues then we should allow for that to hap­pen.” Medical experts will now have time to deter­mine whether…

The Concord Monitor of New Hampshire called for repeal of the state’s death penal­ty in a recent edi­to­r­i­al. The paper con­trast­ed the case of Michael Addison, the state’s only death row inmate, to that of John Brooks, who was con­vict­ed of hir­ing three hit­men to kill a handy­man, whom Brooks believed had stolen from him. Brooks received a sen­tence of life with­out parole. The Monitor not­ed, ​“Brooks was rich and white; Addison was poor and black.… Addison’s…

As states try to secure the drugs for car­ry­ing out lethal injec­tions, they are increas­ing­ly resort­ing ​“to secre­cy and back­up exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols neces­si­tat­ed by drug short­ages instead of treat­ing those con­demned to death with the dig­ni­ty appro­pri­ate to any human life,” accord­ing to a recent arti­cle in the Crime Report by Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center. The arti­cle described a num­ber of des­per­ate mea­sures tak­en by states,…