Publications & Testimony

The fed­er­al Drug Enforcement Administration has seized Georgia​’s for­eign sup­ply of sodi­um thiopen­tal, say­ing it will hold the drug while it inves­ti­gates whether the Department of Corrections import­ed the drug legal­ly. In February, attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Georgia death row inmate Andrew DeYoung sent a let­ter to Attorney General Eric Holder alleg­ing that Georgia had vio­lat­ed the fed­er­al Controlled Substances Act​“by fail­ing to register…

In a recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune fol­low­ing Illinois​’s abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, author and attor­ney Scott Turow (pic­tured) out­lined three major con­ser­v­a­tive rea­sons for oppos­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: it is a failed gov­ern­ment pro­gram, it is a waste of mon­ey, and it does­n’t fit with the idea of lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment. Turow served on for­mer Governor George Ryan’s Commission on Capital Punishment, which found…

On March 10, a North Carolina supe­ri­or court judge released his opin­ion throw­ing out mur­der charges against Derrick Michael Allen, who was accused in the 1998 death and sex­u­al assault of a 2‑year-old girl. Judge Orlando Hudson dis­missed the case after find­ing that a State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) report was pre­pared in an​“inac­cu­rate, incom­plete and inten­tion­al­ly mis­lead­ing man­ner.” Judge Hudson also found that an SBI agent (now…

On March 10, the exe­cu­tion of Johnnie Baston (pic­tured) in Ohio marked the first time any state car­ried out a death sen­tence with a sin­gle dose of the bar­bi­t­u­ate pen­to­bar­bi­tal. The use of pen­to­bar­bi­tal, more com­mon­ly employed in euth­a­niz­ing ani­mals, raised con­cerns among some death penal­ty experts. Fordham University law pro­fes­sor Deborah Denno warned,​“Ohio is gam­bling blind­ly in its rush to exe­cute. There is no reason why…

An edi­to­r­i­al in the Chicago Sun-Times applaud­ed Illinois Governor Pat Quinn for sign­ing the bill abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty. The edi­tors wrote,​“We’ve learned that the sys­tem makes too many mis­takes to entrust it with the ulti­mate pow­er of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. We’ve learned that legal safe­guards can be pushed aside when emo­tions are high after a heinous crime. We’ve learned that polit­i­cal ambi­tion some­times blinds those in…

On March 9, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a repeal of the death penal­ty, replac­ing it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. The gov­er­nor also com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of the 15 peo­ple on the state’s death row to life with­out parole. The ban on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment comes after an eleven-year mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions declared by for­mer Republican Gov. George Ryan and makes Illinois the 16^th state to end the death penalty.

A recent study by Dr. Stephen Greenspan, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado, revealed that through­out American his­to­ry at least 106 indi­vid­u­als have been grant­ed posthu­mous par­dons, includ­ing 12 indi­vid­u­als who were exe­cut­ed. Although not all of the par­dons were grant­ed because of doubts about the defen­dan­t’s guilt, Dr. Greenspan found that in many instances the defen­dant was proven, or was very like­ly, not…

On March 7, the U.S. Supreme Court held (6 – 3) that Hank Skinner, a Texas death row inmate who came with­in an hour of exe­cu­tion in 2010, can chal­lenge the state’s refusal to test cru­cial DNA evi­dence from his case in fed­er­al court. Skinner has always main­tained his inno­cence of the 1993 mur­ders of his girl­friend and her two sons and request­ed that Texas per­form DNA test­ing on key pieces of evi­dence that might point to…

A for­mer State Department offi­cial in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is urg­ing Congress to help the U.S. com­ply with a rul­ing from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regard­ing the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations as a way of pro­tect­ing U.S. cit­i­zens trav­el­ing abroad. John Bellinger, who argued before the ICJ, said in an op-ed in the Washington Post that​“a key pro­vi­sion [of the Vienna Convention] requires par­ties to the…

Some states are turn­ing to the wide­ly avail­able-drug pen­to­bar­bi­tal for use in their lethal injec­tions, instead of sodi­um thiopen­tal, which is in short sup­ply in the U.S. But some med­ical pro­fes­sion­als have not­ed that, although the new drug shares many sim­i­lar­i­ties with sodi­um thiopen­tal, pen­to­bar­bi­tal has rarely been used in humans. Dr. David Varlotta, who sits on the board of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, said that he has not used…