Publications & Testimony

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.

Click to enlarge Despite the 3 executions carried out on June 17 and 18, executions and death sentences in the U.S. have steadily declined since the 1990s. Moreover, the number of states carrying out executions has also dropped to a small minority (see chart). Since executions peaked in 1999, the number of states carrying out at least one execution in a year has fallen by over 50%. In 1999, 20 states carried out executions. In 2012 and 2013, just 9 states did so. As of June 20, 2014, only 6 of…

Some defendants who commit murder are automatically excluded from the death penalty in the U.S., such as juveniles and the intellectually disabled. Others with similar deficits are regularly executed. A new study by Robert Smith (l.), Sophie Cull, and Zoe Robinson examined the mitigating evidence present in 100 recent cases resulting in execution, testing whether the offenders possessed qualities similar to those spared from execution. The authors found that “Nearly nine of every ten executed…

Georgia and Missouri each carried out an execution on June 17 and 18 respectively, marking the first executions since the botched lethal injection of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma on April 29. Georgia executed Marcus Wellons (l.) after challenges to the state’s lethal injection secrecy law were denied. One of the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit that allowed the execution wrote separately of the “disturbing circularity problem” in requiring Wellons to show that the planned…

The most recent issue of The Angolite, a magazine written and published by prisoners at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, which houses the state’s death row, contains a number of articles relevant to the death penalty. The first, “Shifting Values,” discusses the declining use of the death penalty through an examination of developments in 2013. A second article, “Death House Cat & Mouse,” reports on Louisiana’s complicated struggle to obtain lethal injection drugs for executions. Another…

On June 12, the Supreme Court of Florida (6 – 1) overturned the convictions and death sentence of Carl Dausch because the state presented insufficient evidence of his guilt at trial. The Court directed that he be acquitted of all offenses, stating, “[T]he record lacks sufficient evidence of the perpetrator’s identity.” Dausch was convicted primarily on fingerprints and DNA from a cigarette butt that were found in the victim’s car. DNA evidence taken from the victim was less definitive. Dausch…

The American Bar Association has released a new publication, The State of Criminal Justice 2014, examining major issues, trends and significant changes in America’s criminal justice system. The chapter devoted to capital punishment was written by Ronald Tabak, an attorney at Skadden Arps. Tabak presents evidence of the declining use of the death penalty in death sentences and executions, particularly noting the growing geographic isolation of the death penalty. He also highlights numerous…