Publications & Testimony

On November 19, 110 coun­tries vot­ed for a res­o­lu­tion at the United Nations General Assembly call­ing for a world­wide mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions as a step towards the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. The vote marked record sup­port for the res­o­lu­tion com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. Among the coun­tries sup­port­ing the res­o­lu­tion were the European Union nations, Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Israel. The United States, Japan, China, Iran, India, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe were…

A new book, Race, Rape, and Injustice: Documenting and Challenging Death Penalty Cases in the Civil Rights Era, recounts the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of twen­ty-eight law stu­dents who trav­eled through­out the South in the 1960s to gath­er data about the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in rape cas­es. They found the death penal­ty was used almost exclu­sive­ly against black defen­dants accused of rap­ing white women. The book was large­ly writ­ten by Barrett Foerster, one of the stu­dents, and then completed…

According to Gary Syphus of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s Office in Utah, seek­ing the death penal­ty costs the state an addi­tion­al $1.6 mil­lion per inmate from tri­al to exe­cu­tion com­pared to life-with­out-parole cas­es. Syphus offered this esti­mate to the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee of the Utah leg­is­la­ture on November 14. Republican state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Handy had asked for an exam­i­na­tion of the state and local gov­ern­ment costs associated with…

New Hampshire State Representative Renny Cushing (pic­tured), whose father and broth­er-in-law were mur­dered, is one of many mem­bers of the state’s leg­is­la­ture who sup­ports repeal of the death penal­ty. ​“Everyone is mov­ing away from the death penal­ty. It’s clear New Hampshire isn’t in love with the death penal­ty. We haven’t exe­cut­ed any­one since 1939,” Cushing said. New Hampshire’s only death row inmate cur­rent­ly has an appeal before the state Supreme Court. A death penalty…

The Texas Attorney General’s Office has released par­tial results of DNA test­ing long request­ed by attor­neys for death row inmate Hank Skinner. Although the results are incom­plete and reveal the pres­ence of anoth­er unknown per­son, the state is claim­ing the tests con­firm Skinner’s involve­ment in the mur­der of his live-in girl­friend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons in 1993. Skinner had been seek­ing addi­tion­al DNA test­ing since 2000 even while execution dates…

A Texas Court of Inquiry is set to review alle­ga­tions of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct by for­mer District Attorney Kenneth Anderson, who with­held crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion in a first-degree mur­der case in Williamson County. Although pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct has played a role in many wrong­ful con­vic­tions, includ­ing death penal­ty cas­es, such an over­sight hear­ing is unusu­al. Sam Millsap, the for­mer District Attorney of Bexar County, Texas, said, ​“I’d love to be able to tell you I am the…

No new death sen­tences were imposed in North Carolina in 2012, mark­ing the first time since 1977 that this has occurred. The state had a record-low of four cap­i­tal tri­als in 2012. Thomas Maher, exec­u­tive direc­tor of North Carolina’s Indigent Defense Services, said, ​“In some ways, it’s a mile­stone. In oth­er ways, it’s part of a trend.” In 2000, juries in the state presided at 57 cap­i­tal tri­als, ulti­mate­ly yield­ing 18 death sen­tences. In 2011, there were 12 capital trials…

According to the 2012 American Values Survey con­duct­ed by the Public Religion Research Institute, Americans are now even­ly divid­ed on whether the death penal­ty or life with­out parole is the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment for mur­der, while Catholics more strong­ly favor life sen­tences. The September sur­vey found that 47% of respon­dents favored life with­out parole, while 46% opt­ed for the death penal­ty. The poll showed that life with­out parole was favored by Democrats (57%),…

On October 29, the U.S. Justice Department released the annu­al FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2011, indi­cat­ing that the nation­al mur­der rate dropped 1.5% from 2010. This decline occurred at a time when the use of the death penal­ty is also decreas­ing nation­al­ly. The Northeast region, which uses the death penal­ty the least, had the low­est mur­der rate of the 4 geo­graph­ic regions, and saw a 6.4% fur­ther decrease in its mur­der rate in 2011, the largest decrease of…