Publications & Testimony

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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…

Julia Bates has been the lead pros­e­cu­tor in Lucas County, Ohio, since 1997. Although com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing the law, she also believes it is time to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. She said death penal­ty cas­es are​“tor­tur­ous” for those involved, includ­ing judges, jurors, pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, and vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, who are sub­ject­ed to years of appeals.​“It just seems there ought to be a better…

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.

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…

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…