Publications & Testimony

Tyrone Noling (pic­tured) is an inmate on Ohio​’s death row whose guilt has been called into doubt by a lack of phys­i­cal evi­dence, recant­i­ng wit­ness­es and refusal by the state to con­duct a DNA test. Andrew Cohen, writ­ing in a recent issue of The Atlantic, com­pared Noling’s case to that of Troy Davis, who was exe­cut­ed in Georgia in 2011, despite doubts about his guilt. Noling was con­vict­ed of the 1990 mur­ders of an elder­ly couple in…

DPIC is col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on pend­ing leg­is­la­tion relat­ed to the death penal­ty. For exam­ple, at least nine states will con­sid­er bills to repeal the death penal­ty in 2012. In California, a coali­tion called Taxpayers for Justice has been col­lect­ing sig­na­tures to place a death penal­ty repeal ini­tia­tive on the bal­lot in November. On January 25, the Washington Senate Judiciary Committee held a pub­lic hear­ing on a bill to repeal the…

Relatives of a North Carolina inmate who bragged he had an easy life on death row recent­ly made clear that he is seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill and suf­fer­ing great­ly in his con­fine­ment. Danny Hembree Jr. had writ­ten a let­ter to his local news­pa­per taunt­ing­ly describ­ing his expe­ri­ence on death row as a life of leisure filled with col­or TV and naps. However, his sis­ter, Kathy Hembree Ledbetter, said he was a depressed man who had lashed out in hope­less­ness. She…

On January 18, the U.S. Supreme Court (7 – 2) ordered a new hear­ing in fed­er­al court for Cory Maples, an Alabama death row inmate whose state and fed­er­al appeals had been reject­ed by low­er courts because his lawyers quit and missed a crit­i­cal fil­ing dead­line. Writing for six of the Court’s Justices, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg high­light­ed the poor qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion offered by the state in death…

Professor Victor Streib (pic­tured) of the Ohio Northern University Law School has pub­lished the lat­est edi­tion of his peri­od­ic reports, Death Penalty for Female Offenders. This study offers sta­tis­tics and infor­ma­tion relat­ed to women who have been exe­cut­ed or are cur­rent­ly on death row. Among the report’s find­ings are: — In 2011, women con­sti­tut­ed 6.4% of all per­sons sen­tenced to death, the high­est per­cent­age for any year since 1973.

Jim Petro (pic­tured), for­mer Attorney General of Ohio, strong­ly sup­port­ed the death penal­ty as a state leg­is­la­tor, believed the state would save mon­ey because of the death penal­ty, and that it would act as a deter­rent. But, he recent­ly said,​“Neither of those things have occurred, so I ask myself,​‘Why would I vote for it again?’ I don’t think I would. I don’t think the law has done any­thing to ben­e­fit soci­ety and us. It’s…

On January 23, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the state of Ohio chal­leng­ing the uncon­di­tion­al writ of habeas cor­pus and bar to the re-pros­e­cu­­tion of Joe D’Ambrosio (pic­tured), thus end­ing the cap­i­tal case. He has now been freed from death row with all…

A new study by the orga­ni­za­tion Together Against the Death Penalty exam­ined the sta­tus of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. through a series of inter­views and vis­its to death penal­ty states in 2010. The report, 999 — The Death Penalty in the United States, was writ­ten by Arnaud Gaillard and it expos­es some of the seri­ous prob­lems with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in this coun­try from a human rights per­spec­tive. The report calls on deci­­sion-mak­ers to take…

Frank Thompson, a for­mer state pen­i­ten­tiary war­den, has recent­ly joined efforts to repeal the death penal­ty in Oregon. Thompson, who super­vised the only two exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the state since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1984, described the death penal­ty as a​“failed pub­lic pol­i­cy,” and said that​“cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment fails ter­ri­bly in meet­ing any evi­­dence-based out­comes.” Thompson, who recent­ly joined the…

On January 18, the U.S. Supreme Court (7 – 2) ordered a new hear­ing in fed­er­al court for Cory Maples, an Alabama death row inmate whose state and fed­er­al appeals had been reject­ed by low­er courts because his lawyers quit and missed a crit­i­cal fil­ing dead­line. Copies of an Alabama court rul­ing in Maples’s case were sent to a vol­un­teer New York law firm han­dling his appeals but were unopened by the mail­room and returned to the…