Publications & Testimony

The State Bar of Texas has found ​“just cause” to pursue disciplinary action against prosecutor Charles J. Sebesta, whose conduct in the trial of Anthony Graves (pictured) resulted in a wrongful conviction and death sentence. Sebesta, the District Attorney of Burleson County, did not inform Graves’ attorneys that the main witness against Graves had confessed to the crime. Graves spent over 18 years in prison, 12 of them on death row, before being exonerated in 2010. Kathryn Kase, Executive…

The latest edition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA showed a continuing decline in the number of people on death rows across the country. As of January 1, 2014, there were 3,070 inmates on death row, a decrease of 55 from one year earlier. California continued to have the largest death row, with 742 inmates. Since 2000, the national death row population has decreased by 16%. Texas, which had the second largest death row in 2000, has seen a 39% drop, from 455 to 278. California…

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon recently called on all nations to take concrete steps toward ending the death penalty. In his opening remarks at an event co-sponsored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Ban said, ​“Together, we can finally end this cruel and inhumane practice everywhere around the world.” He noted that ​“more than four out of five countries — an estimated 160 Member States — have either abolished the death penalty or do not practice it.” He encouraged…

The theory of the modern death penalty is that it is to be reserved for the ​“worst of the worst” offenders. In 2005 the U.S. Supreme Court determined (Roper v. Simmons) that those under age 18 at the time of their crime were less culpable than older defendants and should be excluded from the possibility of execution. However, a recent paper by Hollis Whitson (l.) argued that scientific research on older adolescents implied that the Court’s analysis should also apply to those under 21. Whitson…

Justice Barbara Pariente of the Florida Supreme Court recently commented on the danger of mistake in eyewitness testimony and the importance of warning juries about the possibility of error. Her comments came in a death penalty case where she said that widely accepted scientific research, “‘convincingly demonstrates the fallibility of eyewitness identification testimony and pinpoints an array of variables that are most likely to lead to a mistaken identification.’” (citation omitted). She also…

On June 26, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the capital murder conviction of Paul Hildwin and ordered a new trial because new DNA evidence completely contradicted the state’s evidence presented at trial. Hildwin was convicted of a 1985 murder and sexual assault. At trial, an FBI forensics expert wrongly claimed that bodily fluids found at the crime scene matched Hildwin and could not have come from the victim’s boyfriend. However, more recent DNA testing excluded Hildwin and found that the…

The Tulsa World of Oklahoma recently conducted an investigation into the state’s execution protocol in the wake of the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in April. Comparing Oklahoma’s protocol to those of 19 other states, the study found that Oklahoma lacks basic safeguards followed in many other states. Among those are regular training for the execution team, the availability of backup drugs in the event of a problem with the initial injection, and specified procedures for determining…

A growing number of conservatives have stated their opposition to the death penalty. Among them is National Review columnist and American Enterprise Institute fellow Ramesh Ponnuru, who cited his Catholic faith as a reason for the change in his stance. He said he had to overcome his initial emotional response to heinous crimes because, ​“Our emotional or intuitive reactions are not a sure guide to right and wrong in matters of moral import.” He added that the death penalty’s declining prominence…

A retrial date of Sept. 22 has been set for Jerry Hartfield, who has been held without a valid conviction in Texas for over 30 years. Hartfield was convicted of murder in 1977 and sentenced to death. His conviction was overturned in 1980 due to an improperly selected jury, and the appeals court ordered a new trial, but that was never held. Gov. Mark White attempted to commute his sentence in 1983, but without a conviction, the commutation was invalid. In 2013, the Texas Court of Criminal…

A recent op-ed by Jordan Steiker, endowed professor of law and Director of the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas, highlighted the declining use of the death penalty in that state. AlthoughTexas leads the nation in executions, death sentences and executions per year have dropped sharply since the 1990s. Prof. Steiker wrote, ​“In 1999, Texas juries returned an astounding 48 death sentences. Since 2008, however, Texas has annually sent fewer than 10 defendants to death row.