Publications & Testimony

In a recent op-ed in the New York Daily News, for­mer New York Governor Mario Cuomo called the death penal­ty a ​“seri­ous moral prob­lem” that is ​“cor­ro­sive” to a demo­c­ra­t­ic cit­i­zen­ry. He said many of the prob­lems of the death penal­ty – inef­fec­tive­ness as a deter­rent, unfair­ness, and the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent – are inevitable: ​“These imper­fec­tions — as well as the hor­ri­ble and irre­versible injus­tice they can pro­duce — are inevitable. In this…

The recent Field Poll con­duct­ed in California indi­cat­ed that more vot­ers now pre­fer life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole instead of the death penal­ty for con­vict­ed mur­der­ers. For the first time since the poll began ask­ing the ques­tion over a decade ago, more vot­ers (48%) say they would pre­fer that some­one con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der be sen­tenced to life with­out parole than the death penal­ty (40%). Eleven years ago, only 37% of respon­dents favored the life sen­tence and…

In one of the first cas­es of the new term, the U.S. Supreme Court on October 4 will hear from attor­neys for death-row inmate Cory Maples of Alabama, whose appeal was reject­ed by low­er courts because his lawyers quit and missed a crit­i­cal fil­ing dead­line in his state appeal. Copies of an Alabama court rul­ing in his case were sent to a vol­un­teer New York law firm han­dling his appeals but were returned unopened to the court because the attorneys…

A recent arti­cle by Alec Baldwin (pic­tured) in the Huffington Post offered the actor’s reflec­tions on the exe­cu­tion of Troy Davis in Georgia. Baldwin said that his posi­tion on the death penal­ty ​“has lit­tle to do with oppo­si­tion to any ​‘eye for an eye’ sen­ti­ments,” but instead, ​“It has to do specif­i­cal­ly with the mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in terms of race, in terms of the poten­cy of court-appoint­ed coun­sel and in terms of the admis­sion of DNA evi­dence in…

On September 26, Ohio Governor John Kasich (pic­tured) grant­ed clemen­cy to Joseph Murphy, com­mut­ing his death sen­tence to life with­out parole, cit­ing the defen­dan­t’s hor­rif­ic child­hood. Murphy was sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on October 18. The Ohio Parole Board had unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed spar­ing Murphy’s life, cit­ing evi­dence from Murphy’s child­hood that indi­cat­ed he was beat­en, starved and sex­u­al­ly abused. The Parole Board also cit­ed a 1992 Ohio…

The lead edi­to­r­i­al in the New York Times on September 26 called for an end to the death penal­ty because, the edi­tors said, it can­not be made to com­ply with the U.S. Constitution. The edi­toral reviewed the 35-year his­to­ry since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976 and con­clud­ed, ​“The death penal­ty is grotesque and immoral and should be repealed.” The paper point­ed to the recent case of Troy Davis, who was exe­cut­ed on September 21 in…

On September 22, Kenneth Kagonyera and Robert Wilcoxson (pic­tured l. to r.) were exon­er­at­ed of mur­der and freed from prison in North Carolina after a spe­cial com­mis­sion ruled they were inno­cent. The two men spent a decade in prison after plead­ing guilty to sec­ond-degree mur­der. They have con­sis­tent­ly main­tained their inno­cence, claim­ing that they only pled guilty because they were threat­ened with the death penal­ty and feared exe­cu­tion. The exon­er­a­tions came…