Publications & Testimony

Andrew Cohen, writ­ing in The Atlantic, recent­ly exam­ined the evo­lu­tion in think­ing on the death penal­ty among Supreme Court Justices. Cohen not­ed that Justices John Paul Stevens (pic­tured), Lewis Powell, and Harry Blackmun all upheld new death-penal­ty statutes in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), there­by ush­er­ing in a return to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. All three, how­ev­er, lat­er said the death penal­ty under these stat­ues was not being applied con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly. Justice…

December 10 is Human Rights Day, the 65^th anniver­sary of the United Nations’ adop­tion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. To mark this anniver­sary, for­mer New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (pic­tured) joined Federico Mayor, President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, in draw­ing atten­tion to the steady decline inter­na­tion­al­ly in the use of the death penal­ty. As gov­er­nor, Richardson…

Timothy Johnson was acquit­ted of mur­der charges and released from prison in Georgia on December 5, twen­ty-nine years after being charged with a mur­der and rob­bery at a con­ve­nience store. Johnson had orig­i­nal­ly pled guilty to the crimes in exchange for the pros­e­cu­tion’s agree­ment not to seek the death penal­ty. The Georgia Supreme Court over­turned his con­vic­tion in 2006 because he was not prop­er­ly informed of his con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion against self-incrim­i­na­tion and his…

When South Africa​’s Constitutional Court was cre­at­ed under then-President Nelson Mandela, its first act was to abol­ish the death penal­ty. Justice Arthur Chaskalson, President of the Court, announced its unan­i­mous deci­sion on June 7, 1995, stat­ing, ​“Everyone, includ­ing the most abom­inable of human beings, has a right to life, and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is there­fore unconstitutional.…Retribution can­not be accord­ed the same weight under our Constitution as the…

Jerry Martin (pic­tured, r.) was exe­cut­ed in Texas on December 3 for killing a cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer dur­ing an escape attempt in 2007. Meanwhile, John Falk (l.), who also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the escape and was report­ed­ly dri­ving the car that struck and killed the offi­cer, has not even been con­vict­ed six years after the crime. Falk’s orig­i­nal tri­al was declared a mis­tri­al due to prob­lems with the jury instruc­tions, and it is pos­silbe another trial…

In an op-ed in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tennessean Drew Johnson evoked con­ser­v­a­tives’ inten­tions to ​“pro­tect inno­cent life, pro­mote finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty and sup­port gov­ern­ment pro­grams that real­ly work” in crit­i­ciz­ing the death penal­ty. Johnson, a Senior Fellow at Taxpayers Protection Alliance and founder of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, cit­ed the many exon­er­a­tions from death row as anoth­er rea­son to chal­lenge cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“Life is too precious to…

In a new report released on December 3, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) called for police depart­ments to adopt new guide­lines to reduce the num­ber of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. The chiefs’ rec­om­men­da­tions include reforms of line­up pro­ce­dures, video­tap­ing of wit­ness inter­views, and for­mal­iz­ing the review of inno­cence claims. The IACP worked with the Justice Department and the Innocence Project to iden­ti­fy ways to reduce poten­tial sources of error and bias.

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Dallas Morning News high­light­ed the voic­es of promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tives who now oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing for­mer Texas Congressman Ron Paul and con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal leader Richard Viguerie. The paper not­ed the new part­ner­ship between the stu­dent-cen­tered orga­ni­za­tion Young Americans for Liberty and Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. The editorial…

Radley Balko, writ­ing in the Huffington Post, has exam­ined more close­ly some of the coun­ties iden­ti­fied in DPIC’s recent report, The 2% Death Penalty, as using the death penal­ty the most. Balko found that many of those high-use coun­ties have a pat­tern of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and oth­er prob­lems. For exam­ple, Philadelphia County has sent more inmates to death row than any oth­er coun­ty in Pennsylvania. However, a study of crim­i­nal cases overturned…