Publications & Testimony

The Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists recent­ly rep­ri­mand­ed and fined Dr. George Denkowski, a psy­chol­o­gist who exam­ined many death row inmates for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties, includ­ing two who were sub­se­quent­ly exe­cut­ed. Despite using unsci­en­tif­ic meth­ods that have been sharply crit­i­cized by oth­er psy­chol­o­gists, Dr. Denkowski found 16 inmates qual­i­fied for exe­cu­tion. As part of a set­tle­ment, Dr. Denkowski agreed not to con­duct intellectual…

An expen­sive fed­er­al death penal­ty tri­al under way in New York illus­trates many of the con­cerns about such pros­e­cu­tions. New York is a state that no longer has its own death penal­ty. Nevertheless, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is seek­ing a death sen­tence for Vincent Basciano, who is already serv­ing life with­out parole. Because the death penal­ty is being sought, the case has already costs mil­lions of dol­lars and the final bill will like­ly be $10 mil­lion or more.

A new book, ​“Queer (In)Justice” by Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock, explores the expe­ri­ences of les­bian, gay, bisex­u­al, and trans­gen­der peo­ple in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, and par­tic­u­lar­ly their inter­ac­tion with the death penal­ty sys­tem. The authors assert that pros­e­cu­tors have used defen­dants’ sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or gen­der-non­con­form­ing appear­ance to obtain cap­i­tal con­vic­tions: ​“In cap­i­tal cas­es a pros­e­cu­tor must suc­cess­ful­ly under­take what should be a…

A recent study by Professors Thomas Mowen and Ryan Schroeder of the University of Louisville found that pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty has shift­ed away from tra­di­tion­al jus­ti­fi­ca­tions (such as its pur­port­ed deter­rent effect, its imag­ined cost-sav­ing val­ue, and its safe­guard of inno­cent lives), and has been replaced by ratio­nales of ret­ri­bu­tion and clo­sure on behalf of vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. According to the study, which was pub­lished in Western Criminology Review,…

When the sole U.S. sup­pli­er of a drug used by all death penal­ty states announced it was halt­ing pro­duc­tion ear­li­er this year, many states turned to sources over­seas. In par­tic­u­lar, Nebraska obtained a large quan­ti­ty of the drug – sodi­um thiopen­tal – from a com­pa­ny in Mumbai, India. Now that com­pa­ny has announced it will no longer sup­ply the drug for use in lethal injec­tions. In a state­ment released to the media, Kayem Pharmaceutical Pvt. Ltd. said, ​“In view of…