Publications & Testimony

On January 14, in one of his final acts as gov­er­nor, Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell wrote a let­ter to the state General Assembly urg­ing leg­is­la­tors to con­sid­er replac­ing the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole if it can­not be made more effec­tive than it has been. Gov. Rendell wrote that the death penal­ty in Pennsylvania is not a real­i­ty: ​“As a for­mer District Attorney and as a death penal­ty sup­port­er, I believe the death penal­ty can be a deterrent –…

On January 11, Desert Storm vet­er­an Cleve Foster of Texas received a stay of exe­cu­tion just moments before his lethal injec­tion. Foster had already fin­ished his last meal when the United States Supreme Court halt­ed the exe­cu­tion. Foster was sen­tenced to death for a 2002 shoot­ing, but has always main­tained that his friend was respon­si­ble for the mur­der. The friend also received the death penal­ty for the crime but died of can­cer before he was…

Four law enforce­ment offi­cials from var­i­ous coun­tries who came togeth­er in Washington, D.C., in 2010 for a ground­break­ing inter­na­tion­al dia­logue on the death penal­ty recent­ly pub­lished an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News regard­ing their dis­cus­sion. From their expe­ri­ence, they dis­count­ed the argu­ment that the death penal­ty deters potential…

On January 11, the Illinois Senate, by a vote of 32 – 25, joined the House in vot­ing to repeal the state’s death penal­ty and re-allo­cate funds in the Capital Litigation Trust Fund to a fund for mur­der vic­tims’ ser­vices and law enforce­ment. If signed into law, Illinois would become the 16^th state to stop cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and would mark the fewest states with the death penal­ty since 1978. Since 1976, Illinois has car­ried out 12 exe­cu­tions. In…

On January 7, 2011, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter grant­ed a full and uncon­di­tion­al posthu­mous par­don to Joe Arridy, who had been con­vict­ed and exe­cut­ed as an accom­plice to a mur­der that occurred in 1936. The par­don came 72 years after Arridy’s exe­cu­tion and is the first such par­don in Colorado his­to­ry. A press release from the gov­er­nor’s office stat­ed, “[A]n over­whelm­ing body of evi­dence indi­cates the 23-year-old Arridy was inno­cent, includ­ing false and…

By a vote of 60 – 54 on January 6, the Illinois House approved SB3539, a bill to repeal the death penal­ty and use the mon­ey saved to assist vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and improve law enforce­ment. The action came eleven years after a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions was put in place by then Governor George Ryan. The repeal bill will now move to the Senate for a vote as ear­ly as next week. In January 2000, Ryan ordered the mora­to­ri­um fol­low­ing rev­e­la­tions that more than a dozen inno­cent people…

Although the United States is con­sid­ered a death penal­ty coun­try, exe­cu­tions are rare or non-exis­tent in most of the nation: the major­i­ty of states—31 out of 50—have either abol­ished the death penal­ty or have not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion in at least 10 years. An addi­tion­al 6 states have not had an exe­cu­tion in at least 5 years, for a total of 37 states with no exe­cu­tions in that time. Three addi­tion­al juris­dic­tions (the District of Columbia,…