Publications & Testimony

Linda Geffin (pic­tured) was one of the Texas pros­e­cu­tors who won a con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for Duane Buck in 1997. She is now the divi­sion chief of the Special Prosecutions Unit in the Office of the Harris County Attorney, and she is urg­ing Gov. Rick Perry and oth­er state offi­cials to stop Buck’s September 15 exe­cu­tion because improp­er race evi­dence was put before the jury con­sid­er­ing his sen­tence. In a letter to…

Of the 16 death sen­tences that have been imposed since the U.S. mil­i­tary made sig­nif­i­cant changes to its death penal­ty sys­tem in 1984, 10 have been over­turned and all the defen­dants were resen­tenced to life. There have been no exe­cu­tions, and the 6 remain­ing cas­es are still under appeal. Military appel­late courts over­turned the sen­tences because of mis­takes made at many lev­els of the mil­i­tary’s judi­cial sys­tem, includ­ing inadequate defense…

Karil Klingbeil, whose sis­ter was mur­dered 30 years ago in Washington, recent­ly wrote an op-ed in the Seattle Times regard­ing the emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal impact that seek­ing the death penal­ty can have on vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends. Klingbeil, a for­mer direc­tor of social work at Harborview Medical Center, was ini­tial­ly in favor of the death penal­ty for her sister’s killer, Mitchell Rupe. Over the years, how­ev­er, she…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s​“Death Row USA” showed a slight increase of 9 inmates in the death row pop­u­la­tion in the United States between October 1, 2010 and January 1, 2011. However, death row is still sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er now (3,251 inmates) than in 2000 (3,682 inmates). The size of death row also declined over­all in 2010. The size of death row is affect­ed by the num­ber of death sen­tences and the num­ber of executions.

DPIC has updat­ed its Executions Per Death Death Sentence page to reflect data through 2010. This page lists states in order of the per­cent­age of death sen­tences result­ing in an exe­cu­tion since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. If every death sen­tence result­ed in an exe­cu­tion, the state would be at 100%, or a rate of 1.00. Using this ratio of exe­cu­tions per death sen­tence, the first five states are Virginia (.725),…

Texas is plan­ning to exe­cute Hank Skinner on November 9 despite the fact that vital evi­dence from the crime scene in his case has not been sub­ject­ed to DNA test­ing. Skinner has always main­tained his inno­cence. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Skinner could file in fed­er­al court to com­pel the test­ing, but that lit­i­ga­tion has not been com­plet­ed. Moreover, a new Texas law became effec­tive on September 1 to ensure that procedural…

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 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…

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…

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…