Publications & Testimony

According to a recent study by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginia exe­cutes the high­est pro­por­tion of peo­ple sen­tenced to death of any state in the coun­try. Of the 149 death sen­tences hand­ed down through 2010, 108 have result­ed in an exe­cu­tion, a rate of about 72 per­cent. Virginia is sec­ond to Texas in the total num­ber of exe­cu­tions car­ried out since 1976, but Texas has exe­cut­ed less than half of those sen­tenced to death. In many states, less than 1 in 10 death…

The lat­est edi­tion of the Death Penalty Information Center’s series of pod­casts, DPIC on the Issues, is now avail­able for lis­ten­ing or down­load­ing. This pod­cast — the 17^th in the series — dis­cuss­es inter­na­tion­al views on the death penal­ty and how those views might affect cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States. The pod­cast includes dis­cus­sions about the role of inter­na­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in lethal injec­tions being car­ried out in the United States,…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the New York Times crit­i­cized a recent rul­ing by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, uphold­ing the heavy bur­den Georgia places on offend­ers with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. In order to be exempt from the death penal­ty, defen­dants must prove ​“beyond a rea­son­able doubt” that they are men­tal­ly retard­ed. The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2002 that such defen­dants can­not receive the death penal­ty, but the Court…

Gussie Vann of Tennessee has been added to the list of those exon­er­at­ed from death row fol­low­ing the dis­missal of all charges against him in September 2011. Vann becomes the 139^th for­mer death row inmate exon­er­at­ed since 1973. Vann was orig­i­nal­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1994 for a sex­u­al assault and mur­der of his own daugh­ter, Necia Vann, in 1992. However, in 2008 fol­low­ing state post-con­vic­tion review, Circuit Court Senior Judge Donald P. Harris…

On November 28 the North Carolina Senate vot­ed to repeal the state’s Racial Justice Act, which allowed death row inmates to use sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial bias to chal­lenge their sen­tences. The House had ear­li­er approved the repeal mea­sure. The Act was passed in 2009, and the first cas­es brought under the law are just now being con­sid­ered in state court. There were con­sid­er­able shifts in the state’s leg­is­la­ture in the wake of the 2010 elec­tions, leading…

The Orlando Sentinel in Florida recent­ly called on the state to change the unusu­al way in which it arrives at death sen­tences, rec­om­mend­ing instead unan­i­mous jury deci­sions for a death sen­tence, the pre­vail­ing prac­tice in the vast major­i­ty of states. In June, a fed­er­al judge declared Florida’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because it only requires a sim­ple major­i­ty to decide whether aggra­vat­ing fac­tors exist and to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence to the…

In a state­ment released on Nov. 22, Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon announced a halt to all exe­cu­tions in the state. ​“I am con­vinced we can find a bet­ter solu­tion that keeps soci­ety safe, sup­ports the vic­tims of crime and their fam­i­lies and reflects Oregon val­ues,” he wrote. ​“I refuse to be a part of this com­pro­mised and inequitable sys­tem any longer; and I will not allow fur­ther exe­cu­tions while I am Governor.” His action halts the upcom­ing exe­cu­tion of…