Publications & Testimony

A new book by Professor Harry M. Ward of the University of Richmond exam­ines the death penal­ty in Virginia at a time when exe­cu­tions were car­ried out for all to see. In Public Executions in Richmond, Virginia: A History, 1782 – 1907, Ward pro­vides a his­to­ry of the hang­ings and, dur­ing the Civil War, fir­ing-squad exe­cu­tions in Virginia’s cap­i­tal city. Thousands of wit­ness­es attend­ed the exe­cu­tions, which were seen as a form of entertainment.

The U.S. Military has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion of a ser­vice mem­ber for 50 years. Of the 11 mil­i­tary death sen­tences that have com­plet­ed direct appeal, 9 (82%) have been reversed. On August 22, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals over­turned the death sen­tence of for­mer Lance Corporal Kenneth G. Parker, the only Marine on the mil­i­tary’s death row. The court also over­turned one of Parker’s two mur­der con­vic­tions after finding…

The Michigan State Law Review recent­ly ded­i­cat­ed a spe­cial issue to the late Professor David C. Baldus (pic­tured), well known for his ground­break­ing research on racial bias in the death penal­ty. Distinguished authors con­tributed a vari­ety of arti­cles on issues relat­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, includ­ing:​“Capital Punishment and the Right to Life” by the late Hugo Adam Bedau and a spe­cial trib­ute to Prof. Baldus by Barbara O’Brien and Catherine…

Reggie Clemons has been on Missouri​’s death row for 19 years for the mur­der of two young white women. He has already come close to exe­cu­tion, and one of the co-defen­­dants in the case has been exe­cut­ed. Clemons’ con­vic­tion was based part­ly on his con­fes­sion to rape that he says was beat­en out of him by the police. Other tes­ti­mo­ny against Clemons came from his co-defen­­dants. Of the four men charged with the mur­ders, three were black and one…

Professor Deborah Denno of Fordham University Law School has pub­lished an arti­cle in the Michigan State Law Review con­cern­ing her research into the use of genet­ic evi­dence pos­si­bly relat­ed to behav­ior char­ac­ter­is­tics in crim­i­nal cas­es. Denno found that the pri­ma­ry use of this evi­dence was in death penal­ty cas­es at the penal­ty phase, and that it is almost always used as mit­i­ga­tion evi­dence. The arti­cle notes some of the dan­gers in this kind of evidence…

A recent arti­cle in the Brooklyn Law Review argues that exe­cut­ing long-serv­ing, elder­ly death row inmates should be deemed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al as cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. In A Modest Proposal: The Aged of Death Row Should Be Deemed Too Old to Execute, Professor Elizabeth Rapaport (pic­tured) of the University of New Mexico School of Law main­tains that harsh death row con­di­tions, along with the fragili­ty of the grow­ing num­ber of elderly…

A new book by Professors Saundra Westervelt and Kimberly Cook looks at the lives of eigh­teen peo­ple who had been wrong­ful­ly sen­tenced to death and who were lat­er freed from death row. In Life After Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity, the authors focus on three cen­tral areas affect­ing those who had to begin a new life after leav­ing years of severe con­fine­ment: the seem­ing invis­i­bil­i­ty of these indi­vid­u­als after their release;…

Legislators and oth­er offi­cials in Utah are express­ing con­cerns about the high costs of the death penal­ty and its lack of deter­rent effect. Speaking before the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee, Republican State Representative Steve Handy (pic­tured) said,​“In today’s world, the death penal­ty is so infre­quent­ly used that I don’t believe it is any kind of a deter­rent.” The Davis County pros­e­cu­tor, Troy Rawlings, a proponent…

On August 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a low­er court rul­ing vacat­ing Justin Wolfe​’s (pic­tured) con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for a drug-con­spir­a­­cy mur­der in Virginia in 2001. His con­vic­tion was based pri­mar­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the actu­al shoot­er, Owen Barber, who claimed that Wolfe hired him to kill Daniel Petrole because of an out­stand­ing drug debt. In 2010, Barber testified in…

The recent fed­er­al cap­i­tal tri­al of Brian Richardson in Atlanta illus­trat­ed the high costs of lit­i­ga­tion when the death penal­ty is sought. Richardson’s case required more than 30 lawyers, and cost hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in expert wit­ness fees. The U.S. Attorney’s Office assigned eight pros­e­cu­tors to the case and appoint­ed 20 pri­vate attor­neys to rep­re­sent inmates who were tes­ti­fy­ing against Richardson. The Federal Defender’s Office assigned…