Publications & Testimony

A black defen­dant fac­ing exe­cu­tion in Louisiana for the killing of a white fire­fight­er is chal­leng­ing the fair­ness of his tri­al because a Confederate flag was fly­ing out­side the Caddo Parish cour­t­house in Shreveport, Louisiana, dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings. Felton Dorsey’s legal team recent­ly argued before the Louisiana Supreme Court that the pres­ence of the flag had an impact on jury selec­tion and on Dorsey’s con­vic­tion. Carl Staples, a prospec­tive black juror, was struck from the…

A num­ber of promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tives in Ohio are lend­ing their voic­es in sup­port of clemen­cy for Shawn Hawkins (pic­tured), who is fac­ing exe­cu­tion on June 14. Republicans Ken Blackwell, a for­mer Secretary of State and 2006 guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date, for­mer Attorney General Jim Petro, and state Sen. Bill Seitz have all writ­ten let­ters to Gov. John Kasich or to the Parole Board on behalf of Hawkins. Blackwell wrote, ​“I have been a pub­lic advo­cate for the death…

The lat­est edi­tion of the Death Penalty Information Center’s series of pod­casts, DPIC on the Issues, is now avail­able. This pod­cast address­es Women and the Death Penalty, includ­ing a short his­to­ry of women exe­cut­ed in America, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of gen­der bias, and dif­fer­ences between women and men in sup­port of the death penal­ty. Generally, this series of pod­casts offers brief, infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions of key death penal­ty issues. Other recent episodes include discussions on…

George Gascon (pic­tured), San Francisco’s District Attorney and a for­mer chief of police, recent­ly dis­cussed his con­cerns about California​’s death penal­ty. He wrote, ​“Despite say­ing that I would­n’t rule out the death penal­ty as dis­trict attor­ney, I want to make clear that I have seri­ous mis­giv­ings con­cern­ing the poten­tial for wrong­ful con­vic­tions and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact of the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty on racial minori­ties. Moreover, victims’…

In the May 9 issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin exam­ines the drop in death sen­tences in Texas and focus­es par­tic­u­lar­ly on the mit­i­ga­tion work being done by the Gulf Region Advocacy Center (GRACE) in Houston, head­ed by Danalynn Recer. Toobin cites a num­ber of pos­si­ble rea­sons for the drop in death sen­tences in Texas, includ­ing ​“the increas­ing use of mit­i­ga­tion, a strat­e­gy that aims to tell the defendant’s life sto­ry.” The arti­cle provides a…

Clark County, Nevada, has more pend­ing death penal­ty cas­es per capi­ta than any oth­er urban coun­ty in the coun­try. According to a review by Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice (NACJ), Clark County (Las Vegas) cur­rent­ly has 80 tri­als in which pros­e­cu­tors are seek­ing the death penal­ty. By com­par­i­son, Maricopa County in Arizona has the most pend­ing death cas­es (130), but it has twice the pop­u­la­tion of Clark County. Los Angeles County,…