Publications & Testimony

June 29, 2012 (Friday) is the 40^th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court​’s deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia, in which the Court found that the lack of stan­dards for impos­ing the death penal­ty enabled the penal­ty to be applied arbi­trar­i­ly, thus vio­lat­ing the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ments. In nine sep­a­rate opin­ions, and by a vote of 5 to 4, the Court void­ed every state’s exist­ing death penal­ty statute, com­mut­ed the sentences of…

The American Bar Association recent­ly pub­lished The State of Criminal Justice 2012, an annu­al report that exam­ines major issues, trends and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. This pub­li­ca­tion serves as a valu­able resource for aca­d­e­mics, stu­dents, and pol­i­cy-mak­ers in the area of crim­i­nal jus­tice, and con­tains 24 chap­ters focus­ing on spe­cif­ic areas of the crim­i­nal jus­tice field. The chap­ter devot­ed to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was written by…

On June 22, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down the state’s lethal injec­tion law as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it del­e­gat­ed too much author­i­ty to the Department of Corrections. In a 5 – 2 deci­sion, the court sided with 10 death row inmates who argued that, under Arkansas’s con­sti­tu­tion, only the Legislature can set exe­cu­tion pol­i­cy, and that leg­is­la­tors vio­lat­ed the state’s sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers doc­trine when it vot­ed to give that author­i­ty to the prison sys­tem in the Method of…

In Louisiana, a lack of ade­quate fund­ing for indi­gent defense in death penal­ty cas­es is caus­ing a crit­i­cal short­age of qual­i­fied coun­sel and long delays in cas­es. John Di Giulio, a mem­ber of the Louisiana Public Defender Board, said that pub­lic defend­ers and region­al offices that rep­re­sent death penal­ty clients are ​“over­worked and under­fund­ed.” Mike Mitchell, chief pub­lic defend­er of the East Baton Rouge Public Defender’s office, attrib­uted the short­age of lawyers to the…

On June 19, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights held hear­ings on soli­tary con­fine­ment in U.S. pris­ons, includ­ing the con­di­tions of many state death rows. The hear­ings marked the first time law­mak­ers on Capitol Hill have con­sid­ered this issue. Anthony Graves (pic­tured r., along with Sen. Richard Durbin), a for­mer Texas death row inmate, described the con­di­tions of his incar­cer­a­tion in…

On June 18, the Ohio Supreme Court stayed the exe­cu­tion of Abdul Awkal (pic­tured) indef­i­nite­ly fol­low­ing a coun­ty court’s rul­ing that he was men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent to face exe­cu­tion. Awkal was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on June 6, but short­ly before the exe­cu­tion Governor John Kasich grant­ed a two-week reprieve to allow time for a men­tal com­pe­ten­cy hear­ing. Judge Stuart Friedman presided over that hear­ing and sub­se­quent­ly ruled that Awkal was too…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA shows a decrease of 19 inmates between January 1 and April 1, 2012. Over the last decade, the total pop­u­la­tion of state and fed­er­al death rows has decreased sig­nif­i­cant­ly, from 3,682 inmates in 2000 to 3,170 inmates as of April 2012. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (724), fol­lowed by Florida (407), Texas (308), Pennsylvania (204), and Alabama (200). Neither California nor…

On June 13, the North Carolina House of Representatives approved a bill to essen­tial­ly over­turn the state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), a ground­break­ing law that allowed a find­ing of racial bias in sen­tenc­ing or jury selec­tion based on sophisticated statistical…