Publications & Testimony

Mexican foreign minister José Antonio Meade Kuribreña recently sent letters to Texas Governor Rick Perry and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles requesting that the execution of Edgar Arias Tamayo, a Mexican citizen, be postponed or commuted. Tamayo is currently on death row in Texas and is scheduled for execution for on January 22, 2014. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. to review the convictions of Tamayo and 50 other Mexican citizens who had been sentenced to…

National and local media have focused significant attention on DPIC’s recent 2013 Year End Report. Coverage has included pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, CNN, on the wires of the Associated Press and Reuters, and in hundreds of other articles and editorials. Papers highlighted the main theme of the report, which showed a continuing decline in the use of the death penalty around the country. The New York Times quoted…

Jeffrey Toobin, writing in The New Yorker, used the current scramble among states to procure the drugs for lethal injections as a paradigm of the much longer effort to make the death penalty palatable to the American public. “The story of the death penalty in this country,” he wrote, “illustrates a characteristically American faith in a technological solution to any problem.” However, Toobin concluded, technology can not cover up the broader problems of capital punishment: “The oxymoronic quest…

(“The Death Penalty in 2013: Year End Report,” DPIC, December 19, 2013). See DPIC’s Press Release. View a video summarizing the report. See other DPIC Reports.

A new report from Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights collects the stories of families who have had a loved one murdered who was in law enforcement. The families discuss the pressure they faced to demand the death penalty as punishment, their efforts to prevent more violence, and their evolving views on the death penalty. Kathy Dillon, whose father was murdered in 1974 while on duty as a New York State Trooper, said, “[I]n the case of my father’s murder, the death penalty was in place in…

As an anesthesiologist, Dr. Joel Zivot applied some of the same drugs in operating rooms as are used in executions in the U.S. He admired their life-saving qualities for patients, but bridled at their use in taking lives. Writing recently in USA Today, he cautioned against this “poisonous” use of medicines, saying, “States may choose to execute their citizens, but when they employ lethal injection, they are not practicing medicine. They are usurping the tools and arts of the medical trade and…

In a recent op-ed in the Denver Post, Colorado defense attorney David Lane argued that examples of the state withholding important evidence in capital murder cases should be grounds for reconsidering the death penalty: “The death penalty in Colorado is a fatally flawed government program. The alternative is life with no possibility of parole. Jurors for many years have expressed a preference for that severe sanction, which is actually less costly than the death penalty.” Lane cited a recent…

On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that had granted relief to death row inmate Scott Cheever. The Kansas court had held that Cheever’s 5^th Amendment right against self-incrimination had been violated because testimony was given at his sentencing hearing by a psychiatrist who examined Cheever pursuant to a court order. Cheever had claimed he was under the influence of drugs at the time of the crime. The psychiatrist testified that his…

In a letter to Texas officials, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged a review of the conviction of Edgar Arias Tamayo, a Mexican citizen scheduled to be executed in January 2014. Tamayo was not notified of his right to contact the Mexican Consulate, a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty that the U.S. has signed and ratified. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ordered the U.S. to review the convictions of Tamayo and 50 other Mexican citizens who had…

Andrew Cohen, writing in The Atlantic, recently examined the evolution in thinking on the death penalty among Supreme Court Justices. Cohen noted that Justices John Paul Stevens (pictured), Lewis Powell, and Harry Blackmun all upheld new death-penalty statutes in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), thereby ushering in a return to capital punishment. All three, however, later said the death penalty under these statues was not being applied constitutionally. Justice Powell told his biographer, “I have come…