Publications & Testimony

Former President Jimmy Carter spoke recent­ly about the death penal­ty in an inter­view with The Guardian in advance of his appear­ance at the American Bar Association’s sym­po­sium on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Atlanta on November 12. As gov­er­nor of Georgia, Carter signed the revised death penal­ty law that the Supreme Court upheld in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), but he told the paper, ​“In com­plete hon­esty, when I was gov­er­nor I was not…

In a 5 – 2 deci­sion, the Florida Supreme Court over­turned the mur­der and sex­u­al bat­tery con­vic­tions and death sen­tence of Roy Swafford (pic­tured), who has been on death row since 1988. The court said in its deci­sion that ​“No wit­ness, DNA, or fin­ger­prints link Swafford to the vic­tim or the mur­der weapon. The new­ly dis­cov­ered foren­sic evi­dence regard­ing the alleged sex­u­al bat­tery changes the very char­ac­ter of the case and affects the admis­si­bil­i­ty of evidence…

Medical experts are con­cerned that untried lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures in some states could cause pro­longed, painful deaths. Ohio will try a pro­ce­dure nev­er used before in an exe­cu­tion on November 14 when it plans to inject a com­bi­na­tion of the seda­tive mida­zo­lam and the painkiller hydro­mor­phone. According to Dr. Jonathan Groner, a pro­fes­sor of clin­i­cal surgery at Ohio State University College of Medicine, a hydro­mor­phone over­dose can cause painful side effects, includ­ing an…

On November 6 the New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a lengthy rul­ing uphold­ing the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Michael Addison, the state’s only death row inmate. The case is the first death-penal­ty appeal to be decid­ed by the Court in decades. The opin­ion said addi­tion­al brief­ing and oral argu­ment will be required before decid­ing ​“whether the sen­tence of death is exces­sive or dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the penal­ty imposed in sim­i­lar cas­es, con­sid­er­ing both the crime and the…

A fed­er­al court in Florida will review chal­lenges to the state’s new lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure, which the state plans to use in an upcom­ing exe­cu­tion on November 12. Florida is the only state in the coun­try to use this new pro­to­col, which begins with the seda­tive mida­zo­lam, fol­lowed by a par­a­lyt­ic drug and potas­si­um chlo­ride. Attorneys for Florida death row inmates allege the process could result in severe pain in vio­la­tion of the 8^th Amendment. Megan McCracken, an attorney…

Chase Blasi is on the Board of the Kansas Young Republicans and pres­i­dent of the Colwich City Council. In a recent op-ed in the Witchita Eagle, Blasi chal­lenged the idea that ​“if you are con­ser­v­a­tive you must favor the death penal­ty.” Instead he not­ed, ​“repeal of the death penal­ty is an impor­tant step for pro­mot­ing a cul­ture of life. The death penal­ty is sim­ply not nec­es­sary to pro­tect life, giv­en that there are alter­na­tives such as life in prison with­out parole…

The Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Federation for Human Rights recent­ly released an analy­sis of the death penal­ty in California and Louisiana. The report con­clud­ed that those states’ appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“vio­lates U.S. oblig­a­tions under inter­na­tion­al human rights law to pre­vent and pro­hib­it dis­crim­i­na­tion and tor­ture, cru­el, inhu­man or degrad­ing treat­ment.” Researchers con­duct­ed inter­views with many of…

A recent Gallup poll found the low­est lev­el of sup­port for the death penal­ty in America since 1972. Gallup’s October poll mea­sured Americans’ abstract sup­port at 60%, a 20-per­cent­age point decline from 1994, when 80% of respon­dents were in favor of the death penal­ty for those con­vict­ed of mur­der. Support for the death penal­ty dif­fered sharply among those who iden­ti­fied them­selves with a polit­i­cal par­ty: 81% of Republicans sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, while only 47% of…

Reginald Griffin, a for­mer death row inmate from Missouri, became the 143^rd per­son in the U.S. to be exon­er­at­ed and freed from death row since 1973, after the state dis­missed all charges relat­ed to his death sen­tence on October 25. Griffin had been sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a fel­low inmate in 1983. His con­vic­tion was over­turned in 2011 by the Missouri Supreme Court (Griffin v. Denney) because the state had with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence. Griffin’s…

In a four-part series on the con­duct of pros­e­cu­tors in cap­i­tal cas­es, The Arizona Republic exam­ined alle­ga­tions by appel­late attor­neys that pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct occurred in near­ly half of the state’s cap­i­tal cas­es since…