Publications & Testimony

O.H. Eaton Jr. (pic­tured), who served as a judge for many years in Florida, recent­ly wrote an op-ed in the Birmingham News call­ing for an end to Alabama​’s law that allows judges to over­ride juries’ sen­tenc­ing rec­om­men­da­tions in death penal­ty cas­es. Eaton, who presided over numer­ous cap­i­tal cas­es dur­ing his 24 years on the bench, said that his expe­ri­ence con­vinced him that the prac­tive of judi­cial override is…

On July 25, the Florida Supreme Court (4 – 3) stayed the August 2 exe­cu­tion of Manuel Valle to allow a low­er court to con­sid­er a chal­lenge to a new lethal injec­tion drug. Last month, Florida sub­sti­tut­ed pen­to­bar­bi­tal for sodi­um thiopen­tal as the first drug in its three-drug pro­to­col for exe­cu­tions. Florida and many oth­er states were forced to seek alter­na­tives to sodi­um thiopen­tal when the drug’s sole U.S. man­u­fac­tur­er decided to…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Donald Heller (pic­tured) served as both a California and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor and was the author of the state bal­lot mea­sure that great­ly expand­ed the list of mur­ders eli­gi­ble for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. After the tri­al of one defen­dant, Heller vol­un­teered to​“throw the switch,” a com­ment that earned him the name​“Mad Dog.” But his views on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have changed sharply over the years. A recent inter­view in the Los…

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…

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)…