Publications & Testimony

On January 7, the Boston Bar Association, rep­re­sent­ing more than 10,000 lawyers, released a state­ment oppos­ing the use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The Association already had a long­stand­ing posi­tion against the death penal­ty in state cas­es. Paul T. Dacier (pic­tured), the President of the Boston Bar, said,​“Without equiv­o­ca­tion, the death penal­ty has no place in the fair admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice and makes no sense on a prac­ti­cal lev­el.” The…

In a recent arti­cle in the Atlantic, Marc Bookman com­pared the path through the jus­tice sys­tem of two co-defen­­dants sen­tenced to death in Florida after com­mit­ting mur­der in 1977. Beauford White was elec­tro­cut­ed in 1987, despite his tri­al jury vot­ing 12 – 0 for a life sen­tence. The tri­al judge over­rode that rec­om­men­da­tion and imposed death. White’s co-defen­­dant, John Ferguson, lived for anoth­er 26 years before…

Ronald George is a for­mer Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, who reg­u­lar­ly upheld death sen­tences. However, in his recent book, Chief: The Quest for Justice in California, he ques­tioned the geo­graph­i­cal dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the state. In his chap­ter,​“Reforming the Judicial System,” he wrote,​“You could have the exact same crime, let’s say a straight­for­ward street robbery homicide,…

An inves­ti­ga­tion by St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon found that the source of Missouri​’s lethal injec­tion drug, pen­to­bar­bi­tal, is a com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy in Oklahoma, not licensed to sell drugs in Missouri. Until very recent­ly, com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies have been reg­u­lat­ed only by state phar­ma­cy boards, not by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Thus, a phar­ma­cy in Oklahoma may be held to different…

As the new year begins, there are sev­er­al notable events relat­ed to the death penal­ty like­ly to occur in the next few months. The first exe­cu­tion of the year is sched­uled for January 7 in Florida. The exe­cu­tion of Askari Muhammad had orig­i­nal­ly been sched­uled for December 3, 2013, but was stayed due to a chal­lenge to the state’s new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The Florida Supreme Court approved the new pro­to­col, and the exe­cu­tion was resched­uled, though legal…

Some legal and psy­chi­atric experts have con­clud­ed that vet­er­ans with post-trau­­mat­ic stress dis­or­der should be inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion. In an arti­cle in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, men­tal health experts Drs. Hal Wortzel and David Arciniegas wrote,​“The tragedy of the wound­ed com­bat vet­er­an who faces exe­cu­tion by the nation he has served seems to be an avoid­able one, and we, as a soci­ety, should take action to ensure that it…

In a recent op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal, the pres­i­dent of the New Mexico Criminal Defense Lawyers Association dis­cussed the high costs of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, Barbara Mandel detailed the expens­es involved in the recent fed­er­al tri­al of John McCluskey. He was sen­tenced to life with­out parole, an out­come that Mandel wrote,​“occurred years and at least a mil­lion dol­lars lat­er than it should have.” According to the…

Mexican for­eign min­is­ter José Antonio Meade Kuribreña recent­ly sent let­ters to Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles request­ing that the exe­cu­tion of Edgar Arias Tamayo, a Mexican cit­i­zen, be post­poned or com­mut­ed. Tamayo is cur­rent­ly on death row in Texas and is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion for on January 22, 2014. In 2004, the International Court of Justice…

National and local media have focused sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion on DPIC’s recent 2013 Year End Report. Coverage has includ­ed pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, CNN, on the wires of the Associated Press and Reuters, and in hun­dreds of oth­er arti­cles and edi­to­ri­als. Papers highlighted the…

Jeffrey Toobin, writ­ing in The New Yorker, used the cur­rent scram­ble among states to pro­cure the drugs for lethal injec­tions as a par­a­digm of the much longer effort to make the death penal­ty palat­able to the American pub­lic.​“The sto­ry of the death penal­ty in this coun­try,” he wrote,​“illus­trates a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly American faith in a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion to any prob­lem.” However, Toobin con­clud­ed, tech­nol­o­gy can not cov­er up the…