Publications & Testimony

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel recent­ly said the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem was ​“com­plete­ly bro­ken” and rec­om­mend­ed it be abol­ished if the state’s exe­cu­tion method isn’t changed. McDaniel said, ​“It’s time for the pol­i­cy mak­ers of Arkansas to say, ​‘Do we con­tin­ue with a bro­ken sys­tem and throw­ing mon­ey and resources at essen­tial­ly point­less lit­i­ga­tion, or do we mod­i­fy the sys­tem?’ And there’s only real­ly two mod­i­fi­ca­tions that I see available —…

In the first half of 2013, six states car­ried out 18 exe­cu­tions. In the same peri­od last year, there were 23 exe­cu­tions in 8 states. The annu­al num­ber of exe­cu­tions has declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly from its peak in 1999, when 98 peo­ple were put to death. There were 43 exe­cu­tions in 2011 and 2012. Sixteen of this year’s exe­cu­tions (89%) have been in the South, with near­ly half in Texas (8). Eight of the defen­dants exe­cut­ed so far this year were black, and ten were white.

The lat­est edi­tion of the Yale Law Journal fea­tures essays com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50^th anniver­sary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the land­mark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion guar­an­tee­ing all crim­i­nal defen­dants a right to an attor­ney. The col­lec­tion of essays from lead­ing legal experts includes an arti­cle by Stephen Bright and Sia Sanneh, titled ​“Fifty Years of Defiance and Resistance After Gideon v. Wainwright,” argu­ing that the criminal…

Timothy McGinty, the Chief Prosecutor of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, is encour­ag­ing the Ohio Parole Board to rec­om­mend clemen­cy for death row inmate Billy Slagle (pic­tured). Slagle was sen­tenced to death in 1988 for the mur­der of his neigh­bor, Mari Ann Pope. At the time of the mur­der, Slagle was only 18 years old, which, along with Slagle’s prob­lems of sub­stance abuse and his record of good behav­ior in prison, has now led the…

The American Bar Association recent­ly released its annu­al report, The State of Criminal Justice-2013, includ­ing a chap­ter on devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. In that chap­ter, author Ronald Tabak focus­es on the con­tin­u­ing decline in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions, recent inno­cence cas­es, and new voic­es who have spo­ken out about the death penal­ty. The chap­ter high­lights recent research on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing stud­ies that found racial…

At a recent event spon­sored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon encour­aged mem­ber nations to work towards end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Mr. Ban par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on the risk of wrong­ful exe­cu­tions, say­ing, ​“We have a duty to pre­vent inno­cent peo­ple from pay­ing the ulti­mate price for mis­car­riages of jus­tice. The most sen­si­ble way is to end the death penal­ty.” The event – ​“Moving away from the death penal­ty – Wrongful…

On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear argu­ments in White v. Woodall, a death penal­ty case from Kentucky, to be heard dur­ing the Court’s next term. Robert Woodall plead­ed guilty to cap­i­tal mur­der and chose not to tes­ti­fy in the sen­tenc­ing phase of his tri­al. His attor­neys request­ed that the judge instruct the jury not to draw any adverse infer­ences from Woodall’s deci­sion not to tes­ti­fy on his own behalf, but the request was denied because the judge…

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram announced a change in its stance on the death penal­ty in a recent edi­to­r­i­al mark­ing the 500^th exe­cu­tion in Texas. While the news­pa­per had pre­vi­ous­ly endorsed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, it now sup­ports the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The edi­tors said that moral grounds alone are enough to war­rant end­ing the death penal­ty, but they also cit­ed a vari­ety of prob­lems in Texas’s use of the death penal­ty, includ­ing geo­graph­i­cal and racial disparities in…

An Ohio Supreme Court com­mit­tee appoint­ed to study the death penal­ty recent­ly made rec­om­men­da­tions on how the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem can lessen the impact of racial bias. The com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed lim­it­ing the death penal­ty to few­er cas­es, focus­ing on those involv­ing mul­ti­ple vic­tims, those involv­ing vic­tims under the age of 13, killings of police offi­cers, and crimes com­mit­ted to elim­i­nate wit­ness­es. The pro­pos­al attempts to remove the influ­ence of race in capital…

On June 26, lawyers in Florida filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing the 2013 Timely Justice Act, a law signed by Gov. Rick Scott ear­li­er in June. The Act could accel­er­ate exe­cu­tions by requir­ing the gov­er­nor to sign a death war­rant with­in 30 days of a Supreme Court review, pro­vid­ed the gov­er­nor deter­mines that the clemen­cy process is com­plete. An exe­cu­tion must fol­low with­in 180 days. The law­suit was filed by the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, a…