Publications & Testimony

Leland Anderson served as a judge in Jefferson County, Colorado, sen­tenc­ing one man to death while spar­ing anoth­er. In a recent op-ed in The Denver Post, Anderson wrote how those cas­es affect­ed him: ​“Those cas­es con­tin­ue to haunt me even to this day, many years after hav­ing signed off on the deci­sions with a trem­bling heart.” He said his views on the death penal­ty have changed since he was on the bench: ​“I have had much time to reflect on the…

A new ani­mat­ed film, The Last 40 Miles, will fol­low a death row inmate on his final jour­ney from the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, to the death cham­ber in Huntsville. The film uses three forms of ani­ma­tion to tell the inmate’s sto­ry, from his trag­ic child­hood to the moment he is being escort­ed to the lethal injec­tion cham­ber. The script was writ­ten by free­lance jour­nal­ist Alex Hannaford and is based on inter­views he con­duct­ed with death row…

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On March 6, the Maryland Senate passed SB 276 by a vote of 27 – 20. The bill replaces the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole for future offens­es. The bill appears like­ly to pass the House of Delegates, and Governor Martin O’Malley has pledged to sign it. The bill would not affect the inmates cur­rent­ly on death row. If passed by the House and signed into law, Maryland would become the sixth state in six years, and the 18^th over­all to aban­don cap­i­tal punishment.

Missouri State Senator Gina Walsh recent­ly voiced her sup­port for Senate Bill 247, a bill to repeal the death penal­ty and replace it with life with­out parole. Sen. Walsh cit­ed the lack of deter­rence and unfair­ness as her pri­ma­ry con­cerns about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“It does­n’t deter crime. It dis­crim­i­nates against racial minori­ties and poor peo­ple who can’t afford attor­neys,” Walsh said. The bill was recent­ly heard in the Judiciary and Civil and Criminal Jurisprudence Committee…

On March 3, Up with Chris Hayes on MSNBC dis­cussed how eco­nom­ic con­cerns are shift­ing more atten­tion to the high costs of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Guest Bryan Stevenson (left), Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, described how the mil­lions of dol­lars spent on the death penal­ty could be used else­where: ​“Maryland’s [death penal­ty repeal] bill actu­al­ly will give mon­ey and resources to the fam­i­lies of peo­ple who’ve lost loved ones.

DPIC is proud to present its lat­est pod­cast, fea­tur­ing award-win­ning author John Bessler dis­cussing the his­tor­i­cal roots of the death penal­ty and the cur­rent prob­lem of arbi­trari­ness in its appli­ca­tion. Bessler is a law pro­fes­sor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and author of Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders’ Eighth Amendment. Prof. Bessler shares his exper­tise on the sur­pris­ing resis­tance to capital…

On February 26, the House Judiciary Committee in Oregon held a hear­ing on repeal­ing the death penal­ty. Among those tes­ti­fy­ing was Frank Thompson, a for­mer super­in­ten­dent of the Oregon State Penitentiary, who over­saw the state’s last two exe­cu­tions. Thompson told the com­mit­tee the death penal­ty does not deter crime, fails to make the pub­lic safer, and places prison work­ers in an unten­able posi­tion: ​“Asking decent men and women to participate…

The Texas Tribune recent­ly pub­lished a six-part series exam­in­ing the plight of men­tal­ly ill defen­dants in the Texas crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The series focused par­tic­u­lar­ly on death penal­ty cas­es, includ­ing that of Andre Thomas, a man with a long his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness. He pulled his own eye out in 2004, and lat­er explained that he did it because he kept see­ing his wife, whom he killed along with his chil­dren just days before. Thomas is among…

On February 25, the U.S Supreme Court agreed to review a deci­sion by the Kansas Supreme Court over­turn­ing the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Scott Cheever, who killed a sher­iff dur­ing a drug inves­ti­ga­tion. Cheever argued that his own drug use made it impos­si­ble for him to have killed with pre­med­i­ta­tion, a fac­tor nec­es­sary for a cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tion. The case had been pre­vi­ous­ly charged in fed­er­al court. In that case, the tri­al judge had ordered a…