Publications & Testimony

There were a num­ber of fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims who appeared before the Commission to share their per­son­al expe­ri­ences with homi­cide and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. They expressed their oppo­si­tion, as vic­tims, to the death penal­ty. As I lis­tened to their tes­ti­mo­ny, and as I do when I lis­ten to the expe­ri­ences of any fam­i­ly mem­ber of a mur­der vic­tim, whether they sup­port, oppose, or have no opin­ion on the death penal­ty, I felt a sense of shared expe­ri­ence, empa­thy, and sol­i­dar­i­ty. My…

Thanks to addi­tion­al research by Prof. Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan, DPIC has learned that one of the indi­vid­u­als on its list of exon­er­at­ed death row inmates had con­ced­ed his guilt to a less­er offense in con­nec­tion with the crime that orig­i­nal­ly sent him to death row. He was, how­ev­er, acquit­ted on the mur­der charge. James Bo Cochran was orig­i­nal­ly found guilty of a 1976 mur­der in Alabama in con­nec­tion with a rob­bery at a gro­cery store. His first…

Kenneth Jost of Congressional Quarterly has pre­pared a com­pre­hen­sive review of the death penal­ty in the U.S. for the recent edi­tion of the CQ Researcher. The overview looks at death penal­ty trends in the past 10 years, pub­lic opin­ion, and argu­ments for and against repeal­ing the death penal­ty. Jost quotes many experts, includ­ing DPIC’s Executive Director con­cern­ing the recent direc­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. “ ​‘The decline in the use of the death…

In a recent edi­to­r­i­al, the Chicago Sun-Times sup­port­ed the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in Illinois dur­ing the cur­rent leg­isla­tive ses­sion. The paper not­ed its past sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“In the past, we’ve sup­port­ed the death penal­ty as long as the legal sys­tem gives the accused a fair tri­al that results in a ver­dict of guilt beyond res­on­able doubt. Sadly, in light of expe­ri­ences in recent years, that goal seems unre­al­is­tic.” Among the…

The longest serv­ing inmate on Texas​’s death row died of nat­ur­al caus­es in Dallas County Jail while await­ing a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. Ronald Curtis Chambers spent 35 years on death row await­ing exe­cu­tion. For much of the time, he was con­fined to his cell for 23 hours a day. Chambers was con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der and sen­tenced to death in 1975, but his sen­tence was over­turned repeat­ed­ly. He was again sen­tenced to death in 1985 and 1992. James Volberding, who worked on…

A cap­i­tal jury in Philadelphia illus­trat­ed the divi­sive­ness and arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty when it could not decide on a sen­tence for Rasheed Scrugs, who admit­ted to killing Police Officer John Pawlowski. The atmos­phere in the jury room became ​“hor­ri­ble” accord­ing to one of the jurors. Jurors almost imme­di­ate­ly report­ed no chance for a ver­dict, as delib­er­a­tions began with sev­en for life in prison and five for death by lethal injec­tion. Some jurors report­ed­ly refused…