Publications & Testimony

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund​’s​“Death Row USA” shows that the num­ber of peo­ple on death row in the United States is con­tin­u­ing to slow­ly decline, falling to 3,242 as of October 1, 2010. In 2000, there were 3,682 inmates on death row. Nationally, the racial com­po­si­tion of those on death row is 44% white, 42% black, and 12% Latino/​Latina. California con­tin­ues to have the largest death row pop­u­la­tion (714), followed by…

Professor Robert M. Bohm has pub­lished a new book on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, The Ultimate Sanction: Understanding the Death Penalty Through Its Many Voices and Many Sides. The book looks at the death penal­ty through inter­views with peo­ple affect­ed by the sys­tem in dif­fer­ent ways.​“We must,” Bohm writes,​“begin to under­stand the reach of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment beyond just the vic­tim and the per­pe­tra­tor.” To that end, he includes perspectives from…

Journalist Euna Lee (pic­tured), who was impris­oned in North Korea along with her col­league, Laura Ling, recent­ly wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post on the impor­tance of con­sular access for indi­vid­u­als arrest­ed out­side their home coun­tries. Lee was report­ing for Current TV when she and Ling were arrest­ed, inter­ro­gat­ed, put on tri­al, and sen­tenced to 12 years hard labor. Only when the Swedish ambas­sador, who rep­re­sent­ed U.S.

The International Academic Network for the Abolition of Capital Punishment has recent­ly released​“Still Killing,” a doc­u­men­tary filmed dur­ing the International Colloquium on the Abolition or Moratoria of the Death Penalty (held at the Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies, Madrid, Spain) and the Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty (in Geneva). The film includes tes­ti­mo­ny and opin­ions of pro­fes­sors, researchers, and…

Recent leg­is­la­tion passed in Texas indi­cates bipar­ti­san sup­port for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform in the state. Legislators recent­ly passed an eye­­wit­­ness-iden­ti­­fi­­ca­­tion bill intend­ed to cut down on the num­ber of vic­tims and wit­ness­es who make mis­takes in in-per­­son and pho­to­graph­ic line-ups. This new law will require police agen­cies to adopt pro­ce­dures and use tech­niques that help lessen the num­ber of false con­fes­sions. Another bill passed recently…

On June 20, U.S. District Judge Jose E. Martinez declared Florida​’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because jurors are not required to make find­ings beyond a rea­son­able doubt on the aggra­vat­ing fac­tors that can increase a guilty defen­dan­t’s sen­tence from life to death. The rul­ing man­dates that defen­dants have a Sixth Amendment right to have all essen­tial ele­ments of proof in crim­i­nal cas­es found by a jury rather than by a judge. Legal…

The Death Penalty Information Center has released a new report,​“Struck by Lightning: The Continuing Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Reinstatement in 1976.” The report shows that despite the changes to sen­tenc­ing schemes approved by the U.S. Supreme Court on July 2, 1976, race, geog­ra­phy, mon­ey and oth­er fac­tors con­tin­ue to make the imple­men­ta­tion of the death penal­ty arbi­trary and unfair. A majority of…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June…

Noted author and human rights activist, Sister Helen Prejean, has released a let­ter sent to George S. Barrett, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cardinal Health in Dublin, Ohio, ask­ing him to secure the return of drugs that may be used to exe­cute Andrew De Young in Georgia and​“to take every step pos­si­ble to make your actu­al prac­tices com­ply with your stat­ed busi­ness and eth­i­cal codes, includ­ing demand­ing the immediate…

A new study of California​’s death penal­ty found that tax­pay­ers have spent more than $4 bil­lion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment since it was rein­stat­ed in 1978, or $308 mil­lion for each of the 13 exe­cu­tions car­ried out since then. The study, con­duct­ed by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula M. Mitchell esti­mat­ed that cap­i­tal tri­als, enhanced secu­ri­ty on death row and legal…