Publications & Testimony

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,…

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…