Publications & Testimony

The moth­ers of two teenagers who were killed in California are plead­ing with the District Attorney to refrain from seek­ing the death penal­ty against the man accused of the crimes. Leah Sherzer said her daugh­ter Bodhi (pic­tured) was an adher­ent of the teach­ings of Gandhi, who advo­cat­ed non-vio­lence. She said ​“Bodhi believed that the death penal­ty was wrong and that she would not want her case to be tried as a death penal­ty case.” Pam Thompson, the moth­er of the other teenager…

A new book by Lori St John, The Corruption of Innocence: A Journey to Justice, recounts the author’s quest to save the life of Joseph O’Dell because of her strong belief in his inno­cence. St John describes the resis­tance she expe­ri­enced in try­ing to have crime-relat­ed items test­ed for DNA evi­dence, and the inter­na­tion­al sup­port that O’Dell attract­ed while on death row. O’Dell was exe­cut­ed in Virginia in…

Many states are seek­ing alter­na­tive ways to car­ry out exe­cu­tions by lethal injec­tion. Missouri announced it intends to use the anes­thet­ic propo­fol, though no oth­er state has used this drug and the drug’s man­u­fac­tur­er has strong­ly object­ed to such use. Officials in Texas and Ohio announced they will be chang­ing their exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols in the near future because their cur­rent exe­cu­tion drug (pen­to­bar­bi­tal) is expir­ing and is no longer…

Vicki Werneke is a fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er who rep­re­sent­ed Billy Slagle on Ohio​’s death row. She recent­ly wrote about her fren­zied work dur­ing the last week­end before Slagle’s death on August 4. She not­ed that he was only 18 and high­ly intox­i­cat­ed at the time of his crime. He had been remorse­ful ever since, try­ing to do some good with his life while on death row. Even the District Attorney of the coun­ty that pros­e­cut­ed him supported a…

According to some experts, the process of repeat­ed­ly sub­mit­ting a per­son to immi­nent exe­cu­tion is a form of psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture that should be…

The Federal Bureau of Investigation recent­ly released the pre­lim­i­nary find­ings of its annu­al Uniform Crime Report for 2012. The final report will like­ly be pub­lished in October, but the ini­tial sta­tis­tics indi­cate the num­ber of mur­ders in the U.S. increased slight­ly by 1.5% from 2011. Three regions of the coun­try showed an increase in mur­ders, while one region declined. Murders in the Northeast decreased by 4.4%. The num­ber of mur­ders increased by 3.3% in the Midwest, 2.5% in…

In his new book, A Wild Justice, Evan J. Mandery (pic­tured) explores the polit­i­cal com­plex­i­ties and per­son­al­i­ties that led to the Supreme Court​’s deci­sions in Furman v. Georgia–strik­ing down the death penal­ty in 1972 – and Gregg v. Georgia–allow­ing it to resume in 1976. He describes in great detail the work of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the gift­ed attor­neys, such as Anthony Amsterdam, who led the way through this…

The Texas Forensic Science Commission announced it will study pri­or crim­i­nal con­vic­tions to deter­mine whether mis­takes were made using dis­cred­it­ed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. The Commission will employ DNA test­ing to review cas­es in which micro­scop­ic hair fibers were used to con­vict peo­ple of rape, mur­der, rob­bery, and oth­er crimes. It has recent­ly been estab­lished that it is impos­si­ble to match a hair under a micro­scope to a spe­cif­ic per­son. Forensic experts can make an…

As the start of the new school year approach­es, we want­ed to remind edu­ca­tors and stu­dents of the excel­lent free resources DPIC offers. Our col­lege cur­ricu­lum, Capital Punishment in Context, uses a case-study mod­el to intro­duce stu­dents to the death penal­ty sys­tem and allows them to access more in-depth research on a vari­ety of top­ics, such as inno­cence, race, and men­tal ill­ness. Each case includes rel­e­vant links to out­side resources, includ­ing schol­ar­ly arti­cles. Our…

A recent arti­cle in The Atlantic by Marc Bookman (pic­tured) shows how threats of the death penal­ty can con­tribute to false con­fes­sions. The piece recounts a Pennsylvania mur­der case in which two defen­dants, Russell Weinberger and Felix Rodriguez, admit­ted to a mur­der they did not com­mit, lead­ing to their impris­on­ment for over 21 years. Rodriguez described his inter­ro­ga­tion: ​“First they showed me pic­tures of the dead guy. I start­ed to cry. I said I…