Publications & Testimony

A newspaper’s investigation into the costs of the death penalty in Florida revealed the state is spending as much as $1 million per inmate just for incarceration and appellate costs. Trial costs would add substantially to the state’s total. Florida has over 400 inmates on death row. For example, keeping J.B. Parker under the special security of death row for 29 years has cost taxpayers $688,000; his appeals cost $296,000, for a total of $984,000. The total for Alfonso Cave has been $1,059,750.

According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, some long-time supporters of the death penalty have recently shifted their positions, questioning whether the occasional execution is worth the costs incurred by taxpayers at a time when budgets are strained. Gil Garcetti (pictured), the former district attorney of Los Angeles County, which is responsible for roughly one-third of California’s 727 death-row inmates, recently remarked, “I was a supporter and believer in the death penalty…

Anthony Haynes is seeking clemency from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. Haynes was only 19 when he killed an off-duty police officer who stopped his car in Houston. He had no prior criminal record. His defense lawyers failed to present mitigating evidence that was available at the time of his trial. More than three dozen people have signed statements saying they would have been willing to testify that Haynes’ crime was extremely out of character and that he was known for being a…

On October 2, Judge Gregory Weeks heard testimony regarding racial bias in jury selection, as three North Carolina death row inmates challenged their sentences under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Prof. Barbara O’Brien of Michigan State University provided statistical evidence of racial bias in the frequent rejection of African-American potential jurors from death penalty trials in the state. According to O’Brien’s study, qualified black jurors were twice as likely to be dismissed from serving…

On October 9, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider cases from Arizona and Ohio questioning whether death penalty appeals can continue if the defendant is mentally incompetent. Under the Court’s prior rulings in Ford v. Wainwright (1986) and in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), capital defendants cannot be executed if they are incompetent or intellectually disabled (mentally retarded). In the upcoming cases, Ryan v. Gonzalez and Tibbals v. Carter, the Court will determine whether mentally incompetent…

The main supplier to the U.S. of a drug proposed for lethal injections has announced it will not allow the drug to be sold for executions. Fresenius Kabi USA, a German-based company with offices in Illinois, issued a statement forbidding the sale of propofol to correctional institutions for death penalty use. Earlier in 2012, Missouri announced it intended to switch to propofol as the sole drug in its lethal injection protocol, becoming the first state to do so. Fresenius Kabi officials reacted…

On September 28, Damon Thibodeaux was freed from death row in Louisiana after an extensive investigation, including DNA testing and the cooperation of Jefferson Parrish District Attorney Paul Connick. Thibodeaux was sentenced to death for the 1996 rape and murder of his cousin. He at first confessed to the attack after a nine-hour interrogation by detectives. He recanted a few hours later and claimed his confession was coerced. In releasing Thibodeaux, Connick said, “I have concluded that the…

On September 28, Philadelphia Judge M. Teresa Sarmina granted a stay of execution and a new sentencing hearing to Terrance Williams because the prosecutors suppressed important mitigating evidence. The evidence, which could have been presented at trial, indicated the prosecutors knew that Amos Norwood, Williams’s victim, had been a pedophile who sexually abused Williams. The judge’s decision came a day after the Board of Pardons agreed to reconsider Williams’s clemency plea. On September 17…

On September 27, a federal jury in Puerto Rico rejected the death penalty for Edison Burgos Montes, who was convicted in August of the murder of his girlfriend in 2005. The jury deliberated for two days before sentencing Montes to life in prison for this drug-related crime. Puerto Rico’s constitution forbids capital punishment, but U.S. prosecutors can seek the death penalty under federal law. This is the fourth capital case tried by U.S. authorities since the federal death penalty was…