Publications & Testimony

The latest edition of the Yale Law Journal features essays commemorating the 50^th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision guaranteeing all criminal defendants a right to an attorney. The collection of essays from leading legal experts includes an article by Stephen Bright and Sia Sanneh, titled “Fifty Years of Defiance and Resistance After Gideon v. Wainwright,” arguing that the criminal system is not truly adversarial because prosecutors possess broad…

Timothy McGinty, the Chief Prosecutor of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, is encouraging the Ohio Parole Board to recommend clemency for death row inmate Billy Slagle (pictured). Slagle was sentenced to death in 1988 for the murder of his neighbor, Mari Ann Pope. At the time of the murder, Slagle was only 18 years old, which, along with Slagle’s problems of substance abuse and his record of good behavior in prison, has now led the county prosecutor to support a commutation. In his statement to the Parole…

The American Bar Association recently released its annual report, The State of Criminal Justice-2013, including a chapter on developments in capital punishment in the United States. In that chapter, author Ronald Tabak focuses on the continuing decline in death sentences and executions, recent innocence cases, and new voices who have spoken out about the death penalty. The chapter highlights recent research on capital punishment, including studies that found racial disparities in death…

At a recent event sponsored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon encouraged member nations to work towards ending capital punishment. Mr. Ban particularly focused on the risk of wrongful executions, saying, “We have a duty to prevent innocent people from paying the ultimate price for miscarriages of justice. The most sensible way is to end the death penalty.” The event — “Moving away from the death penalty — Wrongful Convictions” — featured the film…

On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in White v. Woodall, a death penalty case from Kentucky, to be heard during the Court’s next term. Robert Woodall pleaded guilty to capital murder and chose not to testify in the sentencing phase of his trial. His attorneys requested that the judge instruct the jury not to draw any adverse inferences from Woodall’s decision not to testify on his own behalf, but the request was denied because the judge concluded that Woodall’s guilty…

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram announced a change in its stance on the death penalty in a recent editorial marking the 500^th execution in Texas. While the newspaper had previously endorsed a moratorium on executions, it now supports the abolition of capital punishment. The editors said that moral grounds alone are enough to warrant ending the death penalty, but they also cited a variety of problems in Texas’s use of the death penalty, including geographical and racial disparities in sentencing…

An Ohio Supreme Court committee appointed to study the death penalty recently made recommendations on how the state’s capital punishment system can lessen the impact of racial bias. The committee recommended limiting the death penalty to fewer cases, focusing on those involving multiple victims, those involving victims under the age of 13, killings of police officers, and crimes committed to eliminate witnesses. The proposal attempts to remove the influence of race in capital cases by…

On June 26, lawyers in Florida filed a lawsuit challenging the 2013 Timely Justice Act, a law signed by Gov. Rick Scott earlier in June. The Act could accelerate executions by requiring the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a Supreme Court review, provided the governor determines that the clemency process is complete. An execution must follow within 180 days. The lawsuit was filed by the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, a state agency that represents death row inmates…

On June 25 (Tuesday), the Oklahoma Supreme Court suspended former Oklahoma County prosecutor Robert Bradley Miller for his misconduct in murder trials that eventually led to the release of two death row inmates. In 2006, a federal judge dismissed the murder convictions of Paris Powell and Yancy Douglas after finding that a deal made between the prosecutor and the key witness in the case was never disclosed to the defense attorneys. In Tuesday’s ruling, the Oklahoma Supreme Court found that…