Publications & Testimony

Religious leaders from a variety of faiths spoke about their religious objections to the death penalty at a recent meeting in Columbus, Ohio. The meeting included leaders from several Christian denominations as well as Jewish leaders. Jack Chomsky, cantor at Congregation Tifereth Israel, said he hopes more of his colleagues will join him in speaking out about Jewish tradition, which opposes the enforcement of the death penalty. Jerald Freewalt, of the Office for Social Concerns at the Roman…

Michael Morton (pictured), who was released after 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, called for reforms in Texas’s clemency process. In a recent op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Morton and Scheck highlighted the case of Cameron Willingham, who was executed in 2004 despite serious doubts about his guilt. According to the authors, it is now understood that investigators who believed that Willingham committed arson were…

On October 16 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Kansas v. Cheever. One of the key defense witnesses in Scott Cheever’s death penalty trial testified that Cheever’s use of drugs impaired his judgement on the day of the crime. Prosecutors, in turn, called the physician who performed Cheever’s court-mandated mental exam, and he testified that Cheever was aware of what he was doing when he committed the crime, based on Cheever’s own statements to the doctor. The doctor’s testimony…

Donald Cabana, the former warden of the Mississippi State Penitentiary who died recently, spent many years actively opposing the death penalty. Having supervised several executions, Cabana was particularly disturbed about one in which the inmate may have been innocent. He said, “[H]owever we do it, in the name of justice, in the name of law and order, in the name of retribution, you … do not have the right to ask me, or any prison official, to bloody my hands with an innocent person’s blood.”

Following the provisions of Florida’s recently passed “Timely Justice Act,” the clerk of the state’s Supreme Court has identified 132 inmates on death row who are “warrant ready,” based on their appeals. However, fewer than 20 of those inmates have begun the executive clemency process that must be completed before an execution can take place. Once the governor signals that the clemency process is over for an inmate, a death warrant must be signed in 30 days, but there is no mandatory schedule…

On October 10, the European Union commemorated World Day Against the Death Penalty, coinciding with events around the world challenging the use of capital punishment. Catherine Ashton, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe released a statement, noting, “Voices in favor of the death penalty within some parts of society, including in our continent, show that there is a continuous need to spell out why…

Wyoming’s Casper Star-Tribune recently pointed out why many families of murder victims favor life-without-parole sentences over the death penalty . “[I]t may be a surprise that many families of murder victims prefer the life without parole sentence, simply because it puts the killer away forever without the decades-long court appeals that can accompany a death sentence,” the paper wrote. The editorial noted that there is only one person on the state’s death row, and he is there for a crime…

Former Virginia attorneys general Mark L. Earley Sr. (pictured) and Anthony F. Troy recently called for changes to the state’s death penalty based on a September report from the American Bar Association. Writing in the Washington Post, the past law enforcement leaders called for changes to the restrictive laws governing the sharing of evidence prior to trials, amendments to jury instructions so that jurors in death cases could better understand their responsibilities, and the easing of…

On the opening day of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new term, the Justices announced they would not review the case of Warren Hill, a death row inmate in Georgia with multiple findings of intellectual disability. Hill petitioned the Court after three mental health experts, who initially said he was not mentally disabled, changed their assessment. The execution of inmates with mental retardation was ruled unconstitutional in 2002, but Georgia has the strictest standard in the nation for proving this…