Publications & Testimony

Sharon Keller, the pre­sid­ing judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, received a pub­lic warn­ing from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct on July 16 for her con­duct in bar­ring access to the courts to a death row inmate who was about to be exe­cut­ed in 2007. The Commission said her actions con­sti­tut­ed ​“will­ful or per­sis­tent con­duct that is clear­ly incon­sis­tent with the prop­er per­for­mance of her duties.” When request­ed at home to allow a late-appeal…

On July 14, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Gaile Owens to life in prison. Owens, who was sen­tenced to death in 1986 for hir­ing a man to kill her hus­band, had accept­ed a deal to plead guilty to the crime in exchange for a sen­tence of life in prison. However, the man who did the killing refused to plead guilty, and pros­e­cu­tors then rescind­ed the deal for Owens. Both co-defen­dants were sen­tenced to death. In decid­ing to commute…

Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Canaday issued an Administrative Order cre­at­ing a Florida Innocence Commission ​“to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive study of the caus­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tion and of mea­sures to pre­vent such con­vic­tions.” The Administrative Order cre­at­ing the com­mis­sion stat­ed the basis for the inves­ti­ga­tion: ​“WHEREAS, the occur­rence of cas­es in which the inno­cent are con­vict­ed and pun­ished con­sti­tutes a grave injus­tice; and…

Briefs from both par­ties in the Troy Davis case were filed in the U.S. District Court in Savannah, Georgia, on July 7, 2010. The fed­er­al judge con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­ble inno­cence of Davis, a death row inmate from Georgia who has been grant­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion from the U.S. Supreme Court, request­ed the briefs fol­low­ing an evi­den­tiary hear­ing on June 23 review­ing new evi­dence that had arisen since Davis’s orig­i­nal tri­al. A rul­ing is expect­ed in the near future…

A recent state analy­sis of the costs of the death penal­ty in Indiana found the aver­age cost to a coun­ty for a tri­al and direct appeal in a cap­i­tal case was over ten times more than a life-with­out-parole case. The aver­age death case cost $449,887, while the aver­age cost of a life-with­out-parole case was only $42,658. The study, pre­pared by the Legislative Services Agency for the General Assembly, found that even while fac­tor­ing the longer incar­cer­a­tion period…

Texas District Judge Kevin Fine sched­uled a hear­ing in a death penal­ty case to con­sid­er whether there is a sub­stan­tial risk that Texas’s death penal­ty laws could result in the exe­cu­tion of an inno­cent per­son. The hear­ing, expect­ed to last two weeks, will like­ly include tes­ti­mo­ny from experts around the coun­try. Casey Kiernan, one of the attor­neys for the defen­dant, John Green, filed a pre-tri­al motion regard­ing the issue of inno­cence, which led to the…