Publications & Testimony

In a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, eight retired judges recently asked the Court to review the case of Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed. Reed is scheduled to be executed in January 2015. While the judges, who served on federal and state courts in many jurisdictions around the country, did not take a stance on Reed’s innocence claims, they urged the Court to hear his appeal so that new evidence in the case could be examined under the light of cross-examination in a full hearing…

On July 19 Prof. Charles Ogletree of Harvard University Law School wrote in the Washington Post about the future of the death penalty in the U.S. Noting that the U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed (Hall v. Florida) that executing defendants with intellectual disabilities serves ​“no legitimate penological purpose,” Prof. Ogletree said this reasoning could be applied to the whole death penalty: ​“The overwhelming majority of those facing execution today have what the court termed in Hall to be…

According to a report released on July 16 by the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to provide timely notice to many capital defendants that their cases were under review for possibly inaccurate testimony by FBI experts. Some of these defendants were executed without being informed of the misleading testimony provided by the government. The report stated: “[T]he FBI did not take sufficient steps to ensure that the capital cases…

In a sweeping ruling on July 16, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney held that California’s death penalty is so dysfunctional as to amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Vacating the death sentence of Ernest Jones, who has been on death row for almost 20 years, Judge Carney said the punishment cannot serve the purposes of deterrence or retribution when it is administered to a tiny select few, decades after their sentencing: ​“Inordinate and unpredictable delay has resulted in a death…

A recent law review article by Professors Carol and Jordan Steiker describes how the Supreme Court’s attempt to closely regulate the death penalty has led instead to more unpredictability in its practice, especially with executions. Writing in the Southern California Law Review, the Steikers, of Harvard Law School and the University of Texas Law School respectively, note that, “[T]he shape of contemporary death penalty practice is in many respects less regular than the practice it replaced. …

UPDATE: Middleton was executed on July 16, after the U.S. Court of Appeals lifted his stay. On July 15, a federal judge in Missouri stayed the execution of John Middleton, less than 24 hours before it was to occur. The judge was concerned that Middleton might be mentally incompetent, and hence ineligible for execution: ​“Middleton has provided evidence that he has been diagnosed with a variety of mental-health disorders and has received a number of psychiatric medications over the years,” Judge…

A recent poll of 1,600 Russians found that only 52% support the death penalty, a sharp decline from 2002, when 73% said they supported it. Two years ago, 61% were in favor of capital punishment. Russia currently has a moratorium on the death penalty that was put in place in 1996 by President Yeltsin, shortly before Russia signed a relevant protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights. Russia’s high court has ruled that even death sentences cannot be handed down. Hundreds of those on…

On July 9, just one day before he was scheduled to be executed, Tommy Lee Waldrip was granted clemency by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. Waldrip will now serve a sentence of life without parole. Although the Board did not give a reason for its decision, one of the issues raised in the case was the disproportionality of Waldrip’s sentence compared to that of his co-defendants. Three men were involved in the murder that sent Waldrip to death row, but the other two were given life…

According to a recent op-ed about China in the New York Times, the world leader in executions is having second thoughts about the death penalty. Liu Renwen, a legal scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the annual number of executions in China dropped by half from 2007 to 2011, as more offenders were given ​“suspended death sentences,” which are generally reduced to life sentences. According to a 2008 poll in three provinces, public support for the death penalty is about the…

Questioning Capital Punishment, a new book by James R. Acker, a professor of criminal justice at the University at Albany, provides a comprehensive overview of the death penalty in America. With a basis in court decisions and research studies, the book covers all the key issues and the arguments for and against capital punishment. Chapters are devoted to deterrence, sentencing criteria, racial discrimination, and innocence, among other topics. In reviewing the book, Carol Steiker, a professor…