Publications & Testimony

In a recent op-ed in Oregon’s Statesman Journal, for­mer Texas Governor Mark White (pic­tured) applaud­ed Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber​’s deci­sion to grant a reprieve to death row inmate Gary Haugen and to halt all exe­cu­tions in the state. Governor White wrote,​“I think Kitzhaber’s deci­sion is respectable and coura­geous. In Oregon, as in Texas, it is clear­ly with­in the con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty of the gov­er­nor to grant reprieves and…

The fourth edi­tion of Robert Bohm’s​“Deathquest: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Capital Punishment in the United States,” is now avail­able through Anderson Publishing. The new edi­tion is updat­ed with dis­cus­sion of the lat­est research on the effec­tive­ness of the death penal­ty, the poten­tial for dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion, costs, and new data on mis­car­riages of jus­tice, pub­lic opin­ion, and the influ­ences of reli­gion. This textbook…

On December 7, the American Bar Association released a report assess­ing Kentucky​’s sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and call­ing for a halt to exe­cu­tions in the state. The report was pre­pared by the Kentucky Assessment Team on the Death Penalty, which includ­ed law pro­fes­sors, for­mer state supreme court jus­tices, and prac­tic­ing attor­neys. The two-year study rec­om­mend­ed that the state tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend exe­cu­tions until serious issues…

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…

The U.S. Supreme Court recent­ly con­sid­ered Perry v. New Hampshire, a case ques­tion­ing the valid­i­ty of eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny when the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was made under unre­li­able cir­cum­stances. At the same time, years of sci­en­tif­ic study on the accu­ra­cy of human mem­o­ry are point­ing to the need for reform in the use of eye­wit­ness evi­dence in crim­i­nal cas­es. Barbara Tversky, a psy­chol­o­gy professor at…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…