Publications & Testimony

Oklahoma recent­ly filed a peti­tion with a fed­er­al court ask­ing that pen­to­bar­bi­tal, an anes­thet­ic agent used in euthana­sia of ani­mals, be allowed as a sub­sti­tute for sodi­um thiopen­tal in lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. Earlier this year, Hospira Inc., the nation’s sole man­u­fac­tur­er of the lat­ter drug, announced that it has ceased pro­duc­tion because of a short­age in one of the ingre­di­ents. The short­age has forced Oklahoma and other…

A new report by Victor Streib, Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University, high­lights trends in the death penal­ty regard­ing female offend­ers. The report shows that the death penal­ty in the United States is rarely imposed on women. Of the approx­i­mate­ly 8,200 death sen­tences that have been imposed across the U.S. since 1973, less than 2% have been imposed on female defen­dants (167 out of 8,292, at the time of the report’s publication).

On November 4, the Arkansas Supreme Court ordered evi­den­tiary hear­ings to con­sid­er whether new­ly ana­lyzed DNA evi­dence should result in a new tri­al for Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin, who were con­vict­ed of the 1993 mur­ders of three West Memphis Cub Scouts. Echols was sen­tenced to death and the oth­er defen­dants received life. The results of the DNA tests on evi­dence from the crime scene…

Frontline’s doc­u­men­tary, The Confessions, inves­ti­gates the con­vic­tion of four Navy sailors for the rape and mur­der of a woman in Norfolk, Virginia in 1997. The doc­u­men­tary high­lights some of the high-pres­­sure police inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques, includ­ing the threat of the death penal­ty, sleep depri­va­tion, and intim­i­da­tion, that led each of the​“Norfolk Four” defen­dants to con­fess, despite a lack of evi­dence link­ing them to…

On October 13, offi­cials from the U.S. and Europe held what may have been the first ever inter­na­tion­al forum of law enforce­ment offi­cers on the mer­its of the death penal­ty in reduc­ing vio­lent crime. The offi­cers dis­cussed whether cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment actu­al­ly helps to keep cit­i­zens safe, assists heal­ing for vic­tims, and uses crime-fight­­ing resources effi­cient­ly. The pan­elists, who includ­ed cur­rent and for­mer police offi­cers from the U.S. land…

At a recent press con­fer­ence in Texas, pros­e­cu­tors accused for­mer dis­trict attor­ney Charles Sebesta of hid­ing and tam­per­ing with evi­dence, and of threat­en­ing wit­ness­es in order to con­vict Anthony Graves in 1994. Graves was recent­ly exon­er­at­ed from death row and freed after 18 years of con­fine­ment for a crime he…

Elie Wiesel, acclaimed author, human rights activist, Nobel Peace lau­re­ate and Holocaust sur­vivor, spoke about his oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty dur­ing a lec­ture on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in October. Wiesel, who lost both par­ents and a sis­ter in the Nazi death camps, focused his remarks on fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims. He said that mur­der­ers should be pun­ished more harsh­ly than other prisoners…

On October 29, a New York Times edi­to­r­i­al raised many con­cerns regard­ing the recent exe­cu­tion of Native American Jeffrey Landrigan in Arizona. The Times said​“the sys­tem failed him at almost every lev­el, most dis­turbing­ly at the Supreme Court.” Landrigan’s exe­cu­tion gar­nered nation­al atten­tion because a nation­wide short­age of sodi­um thiopen­tal forced the state to seek the drug from foreign suppliers.

Anthony Graves (pic­tured) was released from a Texas prison on October 27 after Washington-Burleson County District Attorney Bill Parham filed a motion to dis­miss all charges that had result­ed in Graves being sent to death row 16 years ago. Graves was con­vict­ed in 1994 of assist­ing Robert Carter in mul­ti­ple mur­ders in 1992. There was no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing Graves to the crime, and his con­vic­tion relied pri­mar­i­ly on Carter’s testimony…

A new nov­el by acclaimed author John Grisham, enti­tled ​“The Confession,” tells the sto­ry of Donte Drumm, an inno­cent man who was con­vict­ed of mur­der and sen­tenced to death in Texas. The book begins as the exe­cu­tion of Drumm is only four days away and anoth­er man con­fess­es to the crime to a min­is­ter. Although a work of fic­tion, Grisham’s work offers a cri­tique of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and of the death penalty in…