Publications & Testimony

On July 3, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on UN Member States that use the death penal­ty to abol­ish the prac­tice, stress­ing that the right to life lies at the heart of inter­na­tion­al human rights law. During a pan­el orga­nized by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Ban said,​“The tak­ing of life is too absolute, too irre­versible, for one human being to inflict on anoth­er, even when backed by legal process… Where the…

In the first half of 2012, eight states car­ried out 23 exe­cu­tions. In the same peri­od last year, there were 25 exe­cu­tions in 9 states. The annu­al num­ber of exe­cu­tions has declined sig­nif­i­cant­ly from its peak in 1999, when 98 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed. There were 43 exe­cu­tions in 2011. Sixteen of this year’s exe­cu­tions (70%) have been in the South, with near­ly half in just two states — Texas and Mississippi. Seventy-eight per­cent (78%) of…

In June, the National Institute of Justice released the results of a study to deter­mine how often mod­ern DNA test­ing of evi­dence from old­er cas­es con­firms the orig­i­nal con­vic­tion. The study, con­duct­ed by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C, test­ed DNA evi­dence that had been retained in homi­cide and sex­u­al assault con­vic­tions that occurred between 1973 and 1987 in Virginia. Among the homi­cides, there were not enough cas­es in which DNA…

On June 28, North Carolina’s Governor, Beverly Perdue, vetoed leg­is­la­tion that would have essen­tial­ly repealed the state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), a law allow­ing death row inmates to chal­lenge their death sen­tence based on statewide pat­terns of racial bias. The law Gov. Perdue vetoed would have removed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of show­ing bias based on these sophis­ti­cat­ed stud­ies. The gov­er­nor said,​“As long as I am governor,…

John J. Donohue (pic­tured), a research asso­ciate for the National Bureau of Economic Research and a pro­fes­sor at Stanford Law School, recent­ly high­light­ed con­tin­u­ing prob­lems with the death penal­ty sys­tem, forty years after it was struck down for being applied in an arbi­trary man­ner. Professor Donohue wrote that despite​“new and improved” statutes accept­ed by the Court when it rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1976,​“four…

During a recent pre­sen­ta­tion, University of Houston Law Professor David R. Dow shared lessons learned from the 20 years dur­ing which he defend­ed over 100 death row inmates. Professor Dow assert­ed that there are com­mon fac­tors in the lives of those who are cur­rent­ly fac­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Dow said, “[I]f you tell me the name of a death row inmate — does­n’t mat­ter what state he’s in, does­n’t mat­ter if I’ve ever met him before — I’ll write his biography…

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,…

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…

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…

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…