Publications & Testimony

Texas inmate Duane Buck (pic­tured) is one of sev­en death row inmates whose death sen­tences were taint­ed by improp­er racial tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed at their tri­als. In 2000, then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn (now Senator) con­fessed the state’s error to the U.S. Supreme Court, not­ing that sev­en cas­es had been taint­ed by improp­er pros­e­cu­tion tes­ti­mo­ny. ​“It is inap­pro­pri­ate to allow race to be con­sid­ered as a fac­tor in our crim­i­nal justice…

A soon-to-be-pub­lished study has found sig­nif­i­cant racial dis­par­i­ties in the U.S. mil­i­tary’s death penal­ty. The study, which will be pub­lished in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, found that minori­ties in the mil­i­tary are twice as like­ly to be sen­tenced to death as whites accused of sim­i­lar crimes. The study exam­ined all 105 poten­tial cap­i­tal cas­es since the mil­i­tary death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1984. Of the 16 death sen­tences hand­ed down in that time,…

Florida has set an exe­cu­tion date of Septmeber 6 for Manuel Valle (pic­tured), a for­eign nation­al from Cuba who was deprived of his rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The European Union​’s ambas­sador to the U.S. has asked Florida to halt the exe­cu­tion, and Florida’s Catholic Bishops have also request­ed clemen­cy for Valle, say­ing, ​“Killing some­one because they killed dimin­ish­es respect for life and…

Ohio is the only state cur­rent­ly using a sin­gle dose of the drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal to exe­cute inmates, while oth­er states are using pen­to­bar­bi­tal as part of a three-drug pro­to­col. According to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), the state’s sup­ply of the drug will last only until…

After years of reports about the high costs of California​’s death penal­ty, includ­ing a recent study that found the state has already spent $4 bil­lion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment result­ing in 13 exe­cu­tions, a group of Californians has announced a cit­i­zens’ ini­tia­tive to put death penal­ty repeal on the 2012 bal­lot. The group, Taxpayers for Justice, includes over 100 law enforce­ment lead­ers, in addi­tion to crime-vic­tim advo­cates and exon­er­at­ed indi­vid­u­als. Among them…

Barry Scheck, co-direc­tor of the Innocence Project in New York, recent­ly dis­agreed with the opin­ion issued by the Texas Attorney General lim­it­ing the pow­er of the Forensic Science Commission to inves­ti­gate the case of a pos­si­bly inno­cent man who was exe­cut­ed in 2004. The AG’s deci­sion held that the Commission does not have juris­dic­tion to exam­ine evi­dence pri­or to 2005 and there­fore could not look at evi­dence from the case of Cameron…

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln D. Chafee (Indep.) recent­ly explained his denial of a request to trans­fer Jason Pleau to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for a poten­tial death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tion. Chafee stat­ed, ” As a mat­ter of pub­lic pol­i­cy, Rhode Islanders have long opposed the death penal­ty, even for the most heinous crimes. To vol­un­tar­i­ly let Mr. Pleau be exposed to the fed­er­al death penal­ty for a crime com­mit­ted in Rhode Island would be an abdi­ca­tion of…

A new report by Professor James S. Liebman (pic­tured) and Peter Clarke from Columbia University Law School ana­lyzes the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty and con­cludes that, although it is abstract­ly sup­port­ed by two-thirds of the pub­lic, the death penal­ty is actu­al­ly prac­ticed by only a dis­tinct minor­i­ty of juris­dic­tions in the United States. In their forth­com­ing arti­cle, ​“Minority Practice, Majority’s Burden: The Death Penalty…

In a recent op-ed in the L.A. Times, Professor Jennifer L. Mnookin (pic­tured) of the UCLA Law School pro­vid­ed an analy­sis of how pre­con­cep­tions and bias­es toward the uncon­ven­tion­al sus­pects known as the West Memphis Three may have led to their wrong­ful con­vic­tions and a death sen­tence in Arkansas in 1994. Because of the gris­ly nature of the mur­ders, inves­ti­ga­tors decid­ed ear­ly on that it was prob­a­bly relat­ed to satan­ic cult rituals.

Ohio Rep. Terry Blair (pic­tured) is one of two Republican co-spon­sors of House Bill 160, a bill that would replace the death penal­ty in the state with life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Blair, whose opin­ion on the death penal­ty puts him in the minor­i­ty in the 59-mem­ber House Republican cau­cus, attrib­ut­es his views to his reli­gious beliefs. ​“I don’t think we have any busi­ness in tak­ing anoth­er person’s life, even for what…