Publications & Testimony

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)…

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…

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…

On July 8 U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost stayed the upcom­ing July 19 exe­cu­tion of Ohio inmate Kenneth Smith because of the state’s incon­sis­tent appli­ca­tion of its lethal injec­tion process. Judge Frost called the state’s prac­tice​“hap­haz­ard,” and said,​“Ohio pays lip ser­vice to stan­dards it then often ignores with­out valid rea­sons, some­times with no phys­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions and some­times with what have been described as messy if…

Have you ever won­dered about how a death penal­ty tri­al is con­duct­ed or why the appeals take many years? The lat­est edi­tion of the Death Penalty Information Center’s series of pod­casts, DPIC on the Issues, may be help­ful in answer­ing those ques­tions. This pod­cast address­es ques­tions about the legal process in cap­i­tal cas­es, includ­ing jury selec­tion, sen­tenc­ing, and appeals. In addi­tion to cov­er­ing the basic steps in a death penal­ty case, the podcast…

Obama Administration and U.N. High Commissioner Seek Relief for Texas…

A phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tures pen­to­bar­bi­tal (dis­trib­uted under the brand name Nembutal) has announced that it will sig­nif­i­cant­ly restrict its dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem to pre­vent the drug’s use in lethal injec­tions in the United States. Lundbeck Inc. announced in a state­ment that it​“adamant­ly oppos­es the dis­tress­ing mis­use of our prod­uct in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Lundbeck will review orders before pro­vid­ing clearance for…