Publications & Testimony

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…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Chicago Tribune urged Gov. Pat Quinn to sign the bill to end the death penal­ty in Illinois. The paper not­ed that for­mer Gov. Bill Richardson signed a sim­i­lar bill in New Mexico, despite pre­vi­ous­ly say­ing he sup­port­ed the death penal­ty when he came into office. Richardson said that his mind was changed after study­ing the issue and see­ing​“too many mis­takes” and evi­dence that the…

A study recent­ly pub­lished in the jour­nal Criminology meau­red the effects of vic­tim impact evi­dence (VIE) on the like­li­hood of the jury return­ing a death sen­tence. The study was con­duct­ed by Professors Raymond Paternoster and Jerome Deise of the University of Maryland. It involved 135 par­tic­i­pants who watched a video record­ing of an actu­al cap­i­tal tri­al. Seventy-three par­tic­i­pants watched the full…

A recent study by Professor Steven Shatz of the University of San Francisco Law School and Naomi Shatz of the New York Civil Liberties Union sug­gests that gen­der bias con­tin­ues to exist in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, and that this bias has roots in the his­toric notion of chival­ry. In a review of 1,300 mur­der cas­es in California between 2003 and 2005, the authors found gen­der dis­par­i­ties with respect to both defen­dants and victims in…

Attorneys rep­re­sent­ing Andrew DeYoung, a death row inmate in Georgia, have accused the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) of vio­lat­ing fed­er­al law by unlaw­ful­ly import­ing an exe­cu­tion drug from a small phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­trib­u­tor in London, England – Dream Pharma Ltd. (pic­tured). The alle­ga­tions are out­lined in a let­ter deliv­ered to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Feb. 24 and describe an attempt by the cor­rec­tions agency to circumvent the…

A forth­com­ing arti­cle in the ABA Journal reveals the trag­ic admis­sions of fail­ure by a well-known defense lawyer that led to a death sen­tence and poten­tial exe­cu­tion of Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman (pic­tured) in…

Slick, a new short dra­mat­ic film direct­ed and pro­duced by Michael Frediani, fol­lows the sto­ry of a fic­tion­al Texas death row inmate on the night of his exe­cu­tion. Garrett Lee Taylor, the film’s pro­tag­o­nist, faces exe­cu­tion for mur­der, despite strong claims of inno­cence. The film is com­prised of a series of flash­backs reveal­ing events on the night of the crime. The flash­backs show how evi­dence seemed to place Taylor at the scene of the crime and led…

One death row inmate from Oregon and anoth­er from North Carolina recent­ly had their death sen­tences removed because of con­cerns about their men­tal com­pe­ten­cy. In Oregon, Robert James Acremant​’s sen­tence was reduced to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Since 2003, prison psy­chi­a­trists have diag­nosed him as men­tal­ly ill, and Acremant said he hears voic­es and has a trans­mit­ter in his head that allows others to…

In January, attor­neys gen­er­al from 13 states wrote a let­ter to Attorney General Eric Holder ask­ing for assis­tance from the U.S. Department of Justice relat­ed to the recent short­age of sodi­um thiopen­tal for lethal injec­tions in the U.S. The state offi­cials, includ­ing those in Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee, asked for help in​“iden­ti­fy­ing an appro­pri­ate source for sodi­um thiopen­tal or making supplies…

A diverse coali­tion of the nation’s lead­ing crim­i­nal jus­tice reform orga­ni­za­tions recent­ly released Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Administration and Congress. This analy­sis of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and the accom­pa­ny­ing set of rec­om­men­da­tions for change is one of the most com­pre­hen­sive reports ever pub­lished address­ing the prob­lems in this field. The Coalition of over 40 orga­ni­za­tions is coor­di­nat­ed by the Constitution…