Publications & Testimony

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Spokane (WA) Spokesman-Review called for elim­i­na­tion of the death penal­ty in light of its high costs and the state’s tight bud­get. Executions are uncer­tain and delayed by the neces­si­ty of appeals to ensure the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the tri­al. The edi­to­r­i­al cit­ed a study by the Washington Bar Association that iden­ti­fied over $600,000 in addi­tion­al costs for a cap­i­tal case: ​“death penal­ty cas­es are esti­mat­ed to gen­er­ate roughly…

A recent arti­cle in the Akron Law Review asks whether the Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA) is in com­pli­ance with the Sixth Amendment​’s right to con­front wit­ness­es because it allows hearsay evi­dence in deter­min­ing whether a defen­dant is eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. During a typ­i­cal crim­i­nal tri­al, the accused has the right to chal­lenge and cross exam­ine the tes­ti­mo­ny of state wit­ness­es who must appear in per­son. But in a death penal­ty case, the FDPA allows…

Taiwan​’s Minister of Justice, Wang Ching-feng, recent­ly resigned from her post after express­ing her strong oppo­si­tion to the country’s death penal­ty. Since her posi­tion was essen­tial to her beliefs but incom­pat­i­ble with those of Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou and some mem­bers of her own polit­i­cal par­ty, she decid­ed not to con­tin­ue in office. ​“I would rather step down than sign any death war­rant,” she said. ​“If these con­victs can have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to…

A recent arti­cle by Prof. Jeffrey Kirchmeier of the City University of New York School of Law enti­tled, ​“The Undiscovered Country: Execution Competency & Comprehending Death” explores whether men­tal­ly dis­abled inmates who do not under­stand that exe­cu­tion means the end of their phys­i­cal life should be spared. Kirchmeier exam­ines Supreme Court prece­dent under the Eighth Amendment that requires that a con­demned defen­dant be com­pe­tent in order to be exe­cut­ed. The…

Most of those orig­i­nal­ly con­demned to death in North Carolina even­tu­al­ly received less­er sen­tences when their cas­es were con­clud­ed, accord­ing to Professor Frank Baumgartner, a researcher at the University of North Carolina. Many of those sen­tenced to death received a new tri­al because their first tri­al was seri­ous­ly flawed. At their sub­se­quent tri­als, the vast major­i­ty were sen­tenced to a pun­ish­ment less than death, typ­i­cal­ly a life sentence.