Publications & Testimony

John Garvey (pic­tured), pres­i­dent of the Catholic University of America, recent­ly dis­cussed the evo­lu­tion of Catholic teach­ing on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Garvey said that while ear­ly Catholic Church lead­ers sup­port­ed the use of the death penal­ty, the pre­vail­ing con­tem­po­rary teach­ing on the sub­ject clear­ly calls for ​“con­dem­na­tion of exe­cu­tions.” Reflecting on the recent exe­cu­tions of Lawrence Brewer in Texas and Troy Davis…

For some Supreme Court Justices and inter­na­tion­al courts, the exten­sive time that many inmates spend on U.S. death rows has raised con­cerns about cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. In a recent dis­sent regard­ing the exe­cu­tion of Manuel Valle in Florida, Justice Stephen Breyer argued that Valle should not be exe­cut­ed because the 33 years he already spent on death row amount­ed to a vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. In an ear­li­er dis­sent in 1999, Justice Breyer not­ed that the…

William Sessions (pic­tured), the for­mer Director of the FBI, and Mark White, for­mer Governor of Texas, called on Texas to delay the November 9 exe­cu­tion of Hank Skinner and allow access to untest­ed DNA evi­dence. Skinner, who has always main­tained his inno­cence, has repeat­ed­ly peti­tioned for test­ing of sev­er­al items from the crime scene that con­tain DNA. The items — a wind­break­er jack­et sim­i­lar to the one an…

The U.S. Attorney for Western New York has filed more poten­tial fed­er­al death penal­ty cas­es than most of his col­leagues across the coun­try. Since tak­ing office in March 2010, William J. Hochul, Jr. has peti­tioned the Justice Department to seek the death penal­ty against 24 peo­ple, more than his coun­ter­parts in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Miami or cities in Texas. Only two oth­er fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, both from more pop­u­lous dis­tricts than Western New York, have…

A recent review of death penal­ty cas­es in Pennsylvania con­duct­ed by the Philadelphia Inquirer (see ear­li­er DPIC post) has revealed a pat­tern of inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel lead­ing to exten­sive delays and rever­sals of death sen­tences. When the cas­es are lit­i­gat­ed a sec­ond time, now with more com­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, they fre­quent­ly do not result in a death sen­tence. Prosecutors have called the sys­tem a great dis­ser­vice to vic­tims’ families.

On October 27, a group of for­mer Texas judges, pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cers deliv­ered a let­ter to Governor Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and District Attorney Lynn Switzer request­ing DNA tests for death row inmate Hank Skinner. Signatories to the let­ter include: Mark White, for­mer Governor of Texas (pic­tured); Morris L. Overstreet, for­mer Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals; Sam Millsap, for­mer Bexar County…

A broad range of cit­i­zens in California launched a sig­na­ture cam­paign on October 25 to replace the death penal­ty with life in prison and no parole through a bal­lot ini­tia­tive in November 2012. The sig­na­ture dri­ve was announced at the city hall in San Francisco and was attend­ed by mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and law enforce­ment offi­cials, such as San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey (pic­tured), who sup­port the mea­sure. Hennessey cit­ed a study released last…