Publications & Testimony

Between January and the end of June 2011, there were 25 exe­cu­tions in 9 states. During the same time peri­od last year, there were 29 exe­cu­tions. Of the exe­cu­tions this year, 8 were car­ried out using the drug sodi­um thiopen­tal, while 17 involved a new drug, pen­to­bar­bi­tal. Earlier in 2011, Hospira Inc., the sole U.S. man­u­fac­tur­er of sodi­um thiopen­tal, announced that it would no longer man­u­fac­ture the drug, forc­ing states to search for for­eign sources or alter­na­tive drugs for their lethal…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s ​“Death Row USA” shows that the num­ber of peo­ple on death row in the United States is con­tin­u­ing to slow­ly decline, falling to 3,242 as of October 1, 2010. In 2000, there were 3,682 inmates on death row. Nationally, the racial com­po­si­tion of those on death row is 44% white, 42% black, and 12% Latino/​Latina. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (714), fol­lowed by…

Professor Robert M. Bohm has pub­lished a new book on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, The Ultimate Sanction: Understanding the Death Penalty Through Its Many Voices and Many Sides. The book looks at the death penal­ty through inter­views with peo­ple affect­ed by the sys­tem in dif­fer­ent ways. ​“We must,” Bohm writes, ​“begin to under­stand the reach of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment beyond just the vic­tim and the per­pe­tra­tor.” To that end, he includes per­spec­tives from inves­ti­ga­tors, prosecutors,…

Journalist Euna Lee (pic­tured), who was impris­oned in North Korea along with her col­league, Laura Ling, recent­ly wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post on the impor­tance of con­sular access for indi­vid­u­als arrest­ed out­side their home coun­tries. Lee was report­ing for Current TV when she and Ling were arrest­ed, inter­ro­gat­ed, put on tri­al, and sen­tenced to 12 years hard labor. Only when the Swedish ambas­sador, who rep­re­sent­ed U.S. inter­ests in North Korea,…

Recent leg­is­la­tion passed in Texas indi­cates bipar­ti­san sup­port for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform in the state. Legislators recent­ly passed an eye­wit­ness-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion bill intend­ed to cut down on the num­ber of vic­tims and wit­ness­es who make mis­takes in in-per­son and pho­to­graph­ic line-ups. This new law will require police agen­cies to adopt pro­ce­dures and use tech­niques that help lessen the num­ber of false con­fes­sions. Another bill passed recent­ly will make it eas­i­er for convicted…

On June 20, U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez declared Florida​’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because jurors are not required to make find­ings beyond a rea­son­able doubt on the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that can increase a guilty defen­dan­t’s sen­tence from life to death. The rul­ing man­dates that defen­dants have a Sixth Amendment right to have all essen­tial ele­ments of proof in crim­i­nal cas­es found by a jury rather than by a judge. Legal experts say the ruling…

The Death Penalty Information Center has released a new report, ​“Struck by Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Reinstatement in 1976.” The report shows that despite the changes to sen­tenc­ing schemes approved by the U.S. Supreme Court on July 2, 1976, race, geog­ra­phy, mon­ey and oth­er fac­tors con­tin­ue to make the imple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty arbi­trary and unfair. A major­i­ty of the nine…