Publications & Testimony

April 22 will mark the 25^th anniver­sary of the Supreme Court​’s deci­sion in McCleskey v. Kemp in which the Court reject­ed (5 – 4) a claim of racial bias based on a sophis­ti­cat­ed sta­tis­ti­cal study of the death penal­ty in Georgia. Warren McCleskey, an African-American death row inmate con­vict­ed of killing a white police offi­cer, pre­sent­ed the Court with analy­sis show­ing that defen­dants charged with killing white vic­tims had odds of…

A recent study of the death penal­ty in Nevada com­pared the costs of defend­ing cap­i­tal and non-cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es. The study, con­duct­ed by Dr. Terance Miethe of the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, looked at the time spent by defense attor­neys at var­i­ous stages of a case. The study’s find­ings includ­ed: — Clark County pub­lic defense attor­neys spent an aver­age of 2,298 hours on a cap­i­tal mur­der case com­pared to an aver­age of 1,087 hours…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the New York Times called Connecticut​’s deci­sion to repeal the death penal­ty part of ​“a grow­ing move­ment against cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” The edi­to­r­i­al attrib­uted the trend away from the death penal­ty to new research that shows ​“gross injus­tice in its appli­ca­tion and enor­mous costs in con­tin­u­ing to impose it.” The prob­lem of arbi­trari­ness recent­ly came to light in Connecticut, where ​“a pow­er­ful, com­pre­hen­sive study pro­vid­ed evi­dence that…

On April 11, the Connecticut House of Representatives passed (86 – 62) a bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty for future crimes. The same bill passed the Connecticut Senate on April 5. Governor Dannel Malloy has pledged to sign the bill, which will make Connecticut the 17^th state to abol­ish the death penal­ty, and the 5^th to do so in the last 5 years. In a state­ment released after the House vote, Gov. Malloy said, ​“When I sign this bill, Connecticut will join 16 oth­er states and…

Following the recent hand­ing down of a death sen­tence in Philadelphia, the Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation blamed the out­come on an inad­e­quate indi­gent-defense sys­tem. Marc Bookman (pic­tured), writ­ing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, reviewed the case and found, ​“There isn’t a sin­gle motion filed by the attor­neys in defense of their client. Nor is there a request for a jury ques­tion­naire, which is…

Oklahoma inmate Garry Allen (pic­tured) is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on April 12, despite a Pardon and Parole Board’s 4 – 1 rec­om­men­da­tion that his sen­tence be reduced to life with­out parole. In an unusu­al move, Mr. Allen orig­i­nal­ly plead­ed guilty to mur­der­ing his girl­friend with­out receiv­ing any ben­e­fit in sen­tenc­ing, and has tes­ti­fied that he did so to spare his fam­i­ly and the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly the trau­ma of a tri­al. Allen was shot in the head at the time of his…

Donald Heller (pic­tured), who wrote California​’s death penal­ty law, and Ron Briggs, who led the cam­paign to rein­state the law in 1978, are now advo­cat­ing for replac­ing the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Both now say that the law did not have the result they intend­ed. ​“At the time, we were of the impres­sion that it would do swift jus­tice, that it would get the crim­i­nals and mur­der­ers through the sys­tem quick­ly and apply…

A new study pub­lished on the Social Science Resource Network by a group of pro­fes­sors at Cornell University found a high inci­dence of racial dis­par­i­ties in the oper­a­tion of Delaware​’s death penal­ty. The study, pub­lished in con­junc­tion with a sym­po­sium hon­or­ing the late David Baldus (pic­tured), exam­ined the state’s death penal­ty since 1972 and found: — Of 49 defen­dants sen­tenced to death since 1972, 53% were black, 39% were white, and 8% were Hispanic or Native American. In…

On April 5, the state sen­ate in Connecticut approved (20 – 16) a bill to repeal the death penal­ty and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out a parole. The bill is prospec­tive and would not affect the 11 inmates cur­rent­ly on death row. The sen­ate passed an amend­ment to the orig­i­nal repeal bill requir­ing future defen­dants con­vict­ed of mur­der with spe­cial cir­cum­stances to be sub­ject to the same con­fine­ment con­di­tions as cur­rent death row inmates. Sen. Gayle Slossberg,…