Publications & Testimony

A recent article in the ABA Journal drew attention to problems in crime labs across the country that have resulted in wrongful convictions, including some in death penalty cases. Investigations in many states and of the national FBI lab revealed a lack of written procedures, improper mixing of samples from different cases, improper testimony, and even falsification of test results. An Oklahoma City chemist who testified in 23 death penalty cases was later fired for giving false or misleading…

The fortuitous investigation of a case by persistent journalists, rather than the workings of the limited appellate process, has led to the exoneration of a number of innocent individuals. Maurice Possley (l.), a former reporter for the Chicago Tribune, recently wrote how he and fellow-journalist Steve Mills (r.) helped free Daniel Taylor (c.) in Illinois, where he had spent more than 20 years in prison. In 2001, the reporters published a story exposing the false and coerced confession that led…

On September 5, the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Due Process Review Project released its latest report, focusing on the fairness and accuracy of Virginia’s death penalty system. The assessment recommended changes to the way the state handles defendants with mental retardation and severe mental illness. It also recommended requiring prosecutors to disclose additional information about testifying witnesses and allowing prosecutors to withdraw the death penalty even after charging a…

A new study of the cost of the death penalty in Colorado revealed that capital proceedings require six times more days in court and take much longer to resolve than life-without-parole (LWOP) cases. The study, published in the University of Denver Criminal Law Review, found that LWOP cases required an average of 24.5 days of in-court time, while the death-penalty cases required 147.6 days. The authors noted that selecting a jury in an LWOP case takes about a day and a half; in a capital case…

Raoul Cantera (pictured), a former Justice of the Florida Supreme Court, said the state should follow the practice of almost every other death penalty state and require juries to be unanimous when recommending a death sentence. Cantera also said that a a comprehensive review of the state’s death penalty is “long overdue” and should begin by considering the recommendations of a 2006 American Bar Association report on the state’s death penalty. Mark Schlakman, who was a member of the team that…

Anthony Santoro has written a new book about religious perspectives on the death penalty, Exile and Embrace: Contemporary Religious Discourse on the Death Penalty. In describing the book, John D. Bessler, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, said, “Santoro tells the stories of everyone from death row chaplains to bloggers and Bible study participants. In discussing transgression, retribution, and ‘the other,’ he skillfully demonstrates how executions say more about us than about the…

A new study testing internal attitudes and stereotypes among potential jurors in six death penalty states may help to explain the racial disparities that persist in the application of capital punishment. Researchers Justin Levinson (l.), Robert Smith (r.), and Danielle Young tested 445 jury-eligible individuals and found they harbored two kinds of racial bias: they maintained racial stereotypes about Blacks and Whites and made associations between the race of an individual and the value of his…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently held that Texas death row inmate Scott Panetti is sane enough to be executed, despite his long history of severe mental illness. Panetti was sentenced to death for the 1992 murder of his in-laws. Putting aside Panetti’s bizarre behavior in court, the judge allowed him to represent himself at trial, where he wore a purple cowboy suit and subpoenaed Jesus Christ and Anne Bancroft as witnesses. Panetti had been hospitalized 11 times for…

As Ohio prepares to change its execution process in October, the Toledo Blade called on the state to stop the secrecy surrounding the selection of an alternative to current lethal injection drugs. The editors wrote, “No state should proceed with scheduled executions until the drug, or multidrug cocktail, it plans to use has been proven to be humane and efficient. The process of changing how people are executed in Ohio should unfold with far more transparency than the state Department of…

A new Texas law requiring DNA testing of all biological evidence prior to seeking the death penalty could reduce the number of capital cases. District Attorney Billy Byrd of Upshur County noted, “Essentially, every piece of evidence will have to be tested,” he said, which could delay trials more than a year. “Certainly, that will be the case. We will have to deal with certain delays and longer waits,” he added, noting it is not uncommon for DNA evidence to take more than a year to be processed.