Publications & Testimony

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s Death Row USA showed a decrease of 43 inmates under sen­tence of death from January 1 to October 1, 2012. Over the last decade, the total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from 3,703 inmates in 2000 to 3,146 inmates as of October 2012. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (724), fol­lowed by Florida (411), Texas (304), Pennsylvania (204),…

On December 26, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond Jackson ordered Virginia to uncon­di­tion­al­ly free death row inmate Justin Wolfe with­in 10 days and barred the state from using its key wit­ness in any retri­al of Wolfe. Wolfe was con­vict­ed of con­spir­a­cy in the mur­der of Daniel Petrole, a fel­low drug deal­er in north­ern Virginia. His con­vic­tion was based pri­mar­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the actu­al shoot­er, Owen Barber, who claimed that Wolfe hired him to kill Petrole…

On December 21, Seth Penalver was acquit­ted of all charges and will be freed from Florida​’s death row, 13 years after being sen­tenced to death. He was orig­i­nal­ly charged with a triple mur­der and armed rob­bery that occurred in Broward County in 1994. His first tri­al end­ed with a dead­locked jury. At his sec­ond tri­al in 1999, he was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. In 2006, the Florida Supreme Court (Penalver v. Florida, No. SC00-1602, Feb. 2, 2006)…

In a recent op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, for­mer Texas District Attorneys Grant Jones and Sam Millsap (pic­tured) encour­aged the state leg­is­la­ture to recon­sid­er the death penal­ty. ​“Both of us have been involved in the exe­cu­tion of men who may well have been inno­cent,” they said, men­tion­ing three cas­es that ​“raise seri­ous doubts about the wis­dom of con­tin­u­ing the death penal­ty.” Two of the cas­es, those of Carlos DeLuna and Ruben Cantu, involved pos­si­ble eyewitness…

The Chief Justice of California​’s Supreme Court, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, said recent­ly that she does not expect exe­cu­tions in California to resume for at least three years because of prob­lems with the lethal injec­tion process. California has already not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in sev­en years. Justice Cantil-Sakauye said major struc­tur­al changes to the state’s death penal­ty are unlike­ly, and that a pro­pos­al by the for­mer Chief Justice to speed death penal­ty appeals is ​“dead.”…