Publications & Testimony

On September 19 the Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of all charges against Thomas Keenan, a former death row inmate sentenced to death for a 1988 murder. The appeals court also barred the state from retrying Keenan. His co-defendant, Joseph D’Ambrosio, was fully exonerated in 2012 based on similar state misconduct to that found in Keenan’s trial. Keenan’s conviction was overturned by a U.S. District Court in 2012 because the state had withheld vital evidence from the…

Perspectives on Capital Punishment in America is a collection of short scholarly pieces on the death penalty system. The essays stem from the late Justice Thurgood Marshall’s belief that “death is different” and thus must be treated specially within the judicial system. The book examines issues such as wrongful convictions in capital cases, death qualification of jurors, the cost of the death penalty, felony murder rules, and the death penalty’s place in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In…

A recent poll sponsored by the Boston Globe found that a significant majority of Boston residents favor life without parole over the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombing suspect. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of respondents supported a sentence of life without parole if Tsarnaev is convicted, compared with only 33% who favored the death penalty. Sixty-one (61) percent of Democrats and 49% of Republicans (a plurality) supported a sentence of life without parole. The…

On September 18, the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Due Process Review Project released its latest report, focusing on the fairness and accuracy of Texas’s death penalty system. The report found: “In many areas, Texas appears out of step with better practices implemented in other capital jurisdictions, fails to rely upon scientifically reliable methods and processes in the administration of the death penalty, and provides the public with inadequate information to understand and…

Rob Warden, who is stepping down as the executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, recently spoke about the work of finding and freeing innocent defendants. Warden helped exonerate almost 60 people, including many who had been sentenced to death. He noted that some of the success of the Center was the result of timing: “Part of it was the fortuitous advent of DNA forensic technology, which suddenly showed that many people had been wrongfully convicted. And that, in turn, gave…

In a recent op-ed, the co-author of a key study on the viability of California’s death penalty analyzed the recent dramatic shift in public opinion on capital punishment in the state. According to Paula Mitchell, adjunct professor at Loyola of Los Angeles Law School, decades of polling showed about two-thirds of Californians supported the death penalty, but the 2012 referendum to repeal the law lost by just 4 percentage points (52%-48%). Moreover, in counties that used the death penalty the…

The latest edition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row, USA shows a continuation of the downward trend in the overall death row population, though California (731 inmates) — the state with the largest death row — recorded an increase. The next leading states were Florida (412), Texas (298), Pennsylvania (198), and Alabama (197), all of which registered decreases on death row. The total population of 3,108 inmates as of April 1, 2013, represents a 12% decline from the same date 10 years ago…

On September 11, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held (5 – 4) that a trial court illegally ordered the forcible medication of a mentally ill death row inmate for the purpose of rendering him competent to be executed. The case involves Steven Staley, whose mental health began to deteriorate when he entered death row in 1991. He received an execution date in 2006, but was deemed too ill to be executed. A court ordered that his paranoid schizophrenia be treated by forcible medication, which…

Steve Monks is a “staunch conservative” and former Chair of the Durham County, North Carolina, Republican Party. In an op-ed in the News & Observer, he recently argued that the state would save money and make society safer by replacing the death penalty with life without parole. He noted that the homicide rate in the state dropped 3.8% from 2011 to 2012, a time when no one was executed and no one even sentenced to death. In addition, there has been a 25% decline in the homicide rate from 2005…

UPDATE: Avila’s execution date has been stayed. Attorneys for Rigoberto Avila have requested an evidentiary hearing under a new law passed in Texas that allows defendants to challenge their convictions if they were gained through outdated forensic techniques. His case will be the first death penalty case in the state to be considered by the courts under this new legislation. Avila, a Navy vetern, was convicted of murder in El Paso in 2001 for the tragic death of a 19-month-old infant. He is…