Publications & Testimony

Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994, but no executions have been carried out since 1965. On average, the state sentences less than one person to death per year. Four of those death sentences have been overturned in the early round of appeals, including that of Scott Cheever, whose capital conviction was unanimously reversed by the Kansas Supreme Court on August 24. No death sentence that has reached the state’s highest court has been upheld. During Cheever’s 2007 trial, a psychiatrist…

A new book by Professor Harry M. Ward of the University of Richmond examines the death penalty in Virginia at a time when executions were carried out for all to see. In Public Executions in Richmond, Virginia: A History, 1782 – 1907, Ward provides a history of the hangings and, during the Civil War, firing-squad executions in Virginia’s capital city. Thousands of witnesses attended the executions, which were seen as a form of entertainment. Public executions ended with the introduction of the…

The U.S. Military has not carried out an execution of a service member for 50 years. Of the 11 military death sentences that have completed direct appeal, 9 (82%) have been reversed. On August 22, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the death sentence of former Lance Corporal Kenneth G. Parker, the only Marine on the military’s death row. The court also overturned one of Parker’s two murder convictions after finding that his guilt was not proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Michigan State Law Review recently dedicated a special issue to the late Professor David C. Baldus (pictured), well known for his groundbreaking research on racial bias in the death penalty. Distinguished authors contributed a variety of articles on issues related to capital punishment, including: “Capital Punishment and the Right to Life” by the late Hugo Adam Bedau and a special tribute to Prof. Baldus by Barbara O’Brien and Catherine Grosso. Other authors included in this special edition…

Reggie Clemons has been on Missouri’s death row for 19 years for the murder of two young white women. He has already come close to execution, and one of the co-defendants in the case has been executed. Clemons’ conviction was based partly on his confession to rape that he says was beaten out of him by the police. Other testimony against Clemons came from his co-defendants. Of the four men charged with the murders, three were black and one was white. The white co-defendant is already out on…

Professor Deborah Denno of Fordham University Law School has published an article in the Michigan State Law Review concerning her research into the use of genetic evidence possibly related to behavior characteristics in criminal cases. Denno found that the primary use of this evidence was in death penalty cases at the penalty phase, and that it is almost always used as mitigation evidence. The article notes some of the dangers in this kind of evidence based on past use. Nevertheless, the author…

A recent article in the Brooklyn Law Review argues that executing long-serving, elderly death row inmates should be deemed unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment. In A Modest Proposal: The Aged of Death Row Should Be Deemed Too Old to Execute, Professor Elizabeth Rapaport (pictured) of the University of New Mexico School of Law maintains that harsh death row conditions, along with the fragility of the growing number of elderly inmates due to the aging process, result in excess…

A new book by Professors Saundra Westervelt and Kimberly Cook looks at the lives of eighteen people who had been wrongfully sentenced to death and who were later freed from death row. In Life After Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity, the authors focus on three central areas affecting those who had to begin a new life after leaving years of severe confinement: the seeming invisibility of these individuals after their release; the complicity of the justice system in allowing…

Legislators and other officials in Utah are expressing concerns about the high costs of the death penalty and its lack of deterrent effect. Speaking before the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Interim Committee, Republican State Representative Steve Handy (pictured) said, “In today’s world, the death penalty is so infrequently used that I don’t believe it is any kind of a deterrent.” The Davis County prosecutor, Troy Rawlings, a proponent of the death penalty, nevertheless agreed that…

On August 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling vacating Justin Wolfe’s (pictured) conviction and death sentence for a drug-conspiracy murder in Virginia in 2001. His conviction was based primarily on the testimony of the actual shooter, Owen Barber, who claimed that Wolfe hired him to kill Daniel Petrole because of an outstanding drug debt. In 2010, Barber testified in open court that his testimony at Wolfe’s trial was false, and that Wolfe had…