Publications & Testimony

In a 6 – 3 decision on November 20, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied a request from death row inmate Duane Buck for a new sentencing hearing, despite the fact that racially prejudicial statements had been made during his trial. While the jury was being asked to consider if Buck would be a future danger to society, a psychologist testified that African Americans commit a disproportionate number of criminal offenses. Buck’s case was one of seven identified in 2000 by then-Texas Attorney…

Legal challenges to new lethal injection procedures have delayed executions in Florida and Missouri this week. Similar challenges halted executions in Georgia in July. On November 18, the Florida Supreme Court ordered a hearing on the state’s new execution protocol and stayed the execution of Askari Muhammad, who had been scheduled for execution on December 3. The hearing will examine “the efficacy of midazolam hydrochloride as an anesthetic in the amount prescribed by Florida’s protocol.”

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from Alabama death row inmate Mario Woodward, who was sentenced to death in 2008 despite a jury’s 8 – 4 recommendation for a life sentence. Alabama is one of only three states that allow a judge to override a jury’s sentencing recommendation for life to impose a death sentence; Florida and Delaware also allow the practice, but death sentences by judicial override are very rare in those states. Justice Sonia Sotomayor voted to hear the case, saying…

After concerns were raised that Missouri’s proposed use of the anesthetic propofol in executions could endanger the supply of that drug for use in surgeries, Governor Jay Nixon ordered the Department of Corrections to revise the state’s lethal injection protocol. Experts say that the new protocol, which hides the source of the pentobarbital that will now be used in executions, could result in substandard drugs being used to execute prisoners. The state plans to use a compounding pharmacy to…

Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, has written a new book supporting capital punishment, The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice among the Worst of the Worst. Blecker urges readers to consider his retributivist argument for the death penalty: “We retributivists view punishment differently,” he wrote. “We don’t punish to prevent crime or remake criminals. We inflict pain — suffering, discomfort — to the degree they deserve to feel it.” He would impose the death penalty not…

On November 13 Ohio Governor John Kasich stayed the execution of Ronald Phillips less than 24 hours before he was to be die by lethal injection in order to consider Phillips’ request to donate a kidney to his mother. Kasich stated, “I realize this is a bit of uncharted territory for Ohio, but if another life can be saved by his willingness to donate his organs and tissues then we should allow for that to happen.” Medical experts will now have time to determine whether Phillips would be a…

The Concord Monitor of New Hampshire called for repeal of the state’s death penalty in a recent editorial. The paper contrasted the case of Michael Addison, the state’s only death row inmate, to that of John Brooks, who was convicted of hiring three hitmen to kill a handyman, whom Brooks believed had stolen from him. Brooks received a sentence of life without parole. The Monitor noted, “Brooks was rich and white; Addison was poor and black…. Addison’s victim had the full force of New Hampshire…

As states try to secure the drugs for carrying out lethal injections, they are increasingly resorting “to secrecy and backup execution protocols necessitated by drug shortages instead of treating those condemned to death with the dignity appropriate to any human life,” according to a recent article in the Crime Report by Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center. The article described a number of desperate measures taken by states, such as secretly obtaining…

Former President Jimmy Carter spoke recently about the death penalty in an interview with The Guardian in advance of his appearance at the American Bar Association’s symposium on capital punishment in Atlanta on November 12. As governor of Georgia, Carter signed the revised death penalty law that the Supreme Court upheld in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), but he told the paper, “In complete honesty, when I was governor I was not nearly as concerned about the unfairness of the application of the death…

In a 5 – 2 decision, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the murder and sexual battery convictions and death sentence of Roy Swafford (pictured), who has been on death row since 1988. The court said in its decision that “No witness, DNA, or fingerprints link Swafford to the victim or the murder weapon. The newly discovered forensic evidence regarding the alleged sexual battery changes the very character of the case and affects the admissibility of evidence that was heard by the jury.” Retesting…