Publications & Testimony

Marcus Robinson will be the first North Carolina death row inmate to have a sen­tenc­ing chal­lenge heard in court based on the state’s 2009 Racial Justice Act. According to the act, a death row inmate who can estab­lish through sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies that his sen­tence was racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry can seek to have it com­mut­ed to life in prison. Robinson’s lawyers plan to argue that he received a death sen­tence part­ly because he is black and his vic­tim was white They plan to cite several…

The cap­i­tal arraign­ment on July 20 of Army Major Nidal Hasan for the mur­der of 13 peo­ple at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009 has brought atten­tion to the death penal­ty in the United States Military. There are cur­rent­ly six inmates on the mil­i­tary death row, which is locat­ed in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In the last two years, four men have been removed from the mil­i­tary death row after their sen­tences were reduced to life. The Uniform Code of Military Justice allows the…

Georgia Superior Court Judge Bensonetta Tipton Lane has ordered that the Department of Corrections (DOC) video­tape the upcom­ing exe­cu­tion of Andrew Grant DeYoung (pic­tured). The exe­cu­tion was first sched­uled for July 20, but after the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Judge Lane’s order, the DOC decid­ed to move DeYoung’s exe­cu­tion to July 21. Videotaping of exe­cu­tions is very rare, with the last known instance in 1992 in California, also as a result of a court…

A recent edi­tion of The Angolite, the nation’s largest prison news mag­a­zine, con­tains an arti­cle detail­ing nation­al death penal­ty trends and devel­op­ments. The piece high­lights the emer­gence of sev­er­al promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tives who have voiced con­cerns with the cur­rent death penal­ty sys­tem, includ­ing Montana State Senator Roy Brown and con­ser­v­a­tive activist Richard Viguerie. The arti­cle is authored by John Corley and pro­vides an…

In 2001, Mark Stroman (pic­tured) shot sev­er­al peo­ple in Texas whom he believed were Arabs in response to the ter­ror­ist attacks of September 11. Stroman killed at least two men and wound­ed Rais Bhuiyan, who is from Bangladesh and was work­ing at a Dallas gas sta­tion. Stroman received the death penal­ty for the mur­ders and is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on July 20. Bhuiyan, who lost the use of one eye as a result of the shooting,…

A new report on the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem pub­lished by the ACLU of Northern California cat­a­logs numer­ous intractable prob­lems and wan­ing pub­lic sup­port which may lead to the end of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. According to the report, ​“California’s Death Penalty is Dead: Anatomy of a Failure,” the death penal­ty in California is being slow­ly aban­doned as pros­e­cu­tors, leg­is­la­tors and tax­pay­ers are increas­ing­ly turn­ing to life in prison…

A Texas cap­i­tal case that pre­cip­i­tat­ed a rare judi­cial review of the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s death penal­ty recent­ly end­ed on July 6 with an unex­pect­ed plea deal. At the end of six weeks of jury selec­tion, the pros­e­cu­tion accept­ed defen­dant John Edward Green Jr.‘s agree­ment to plead guilty to a less­er mur­der charge in exchange for 40 years in prison. The case was delayed in com­ing to tri­al when Judge Kevin Fine (pic­tured) agreed to con­duct a hearing…

On July 12, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond A. Jackson over­turned the mur­der con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Justin Wolfe (pic­tured), who alleged­ly orches­trat­ed the slay­ing of his mar­i­jua­na sup­pli­er, Daniel Petrole Jr., in Virginia over a decade ago. Judge Jackson ruled that pros­e­cu­tors in Wolfe’s case with­held or ignored cru­cial evi­dence that could have helped Wolfe’s defense. The Court held that Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert…

A new report from the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama expos­es the prac­tice of state judges impos­ing death sen­tences by over­rid­ing a jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion for life. EJI’s study found that judges in the state have over­rid­den jury rec­om­men­da­tions 107 times since 1976. In 92% of the over­rides, judges over­ruled life ver­dicts to impose a death sen­tence. More than 20% of the defen­dants on Alabama’s death row were sen­tenced through judge over­rides. These…