Publications & Testimony

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…

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…