Publications & Testimony

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…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Houston Chronicle high­lights the case of Texas death-row inmate Milton Mathis, whose IQ of 62 places him well below the thresh­old for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty (for­mer­ly called​“men­tal retar­da­tion”). Mr. Mathis faces exe­cu­tion on June 21, despite the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing in Atkins v. Virginia, which banned the exe­cu­tion of inmates with intellectual disabilities.

On June 14, Senator Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt.) (pic­tured) intro­duced the Consular Notification Compliance Act. This bill would estab­lish enforce­ment mech­a­nisms for U.S. com­pli­ance with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a key treaty that pro­vides the right to con­sult with your con­sulate for cit­i­zens detained out­side their home coun­try. The U.S. has signed and rat­i­fied this treaty, but has not always…