Publications & Testimony

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…

On June 29, the U.S. Supreme Court returned a death penal­ty case to the Georgia Supreme Court to recon­sid­er whether the fail­ures of the defen­dan­t’s lawyer prob­a­bly affect­ed the sen­tence he received. Demarcus Sears was sen­tenced to death in 1993 for the mur­der of a woman in Cobb County. Sears’ attor­neys attempt­ed to con­vince jurors to spare his life by say­ing that he came from a sta­ble and lov­ing fam­i­ly who would be dev­as­tat­ed if he received the death penalty.

On June 23 – 24, U.S. District Judge William T. Moore heard new tes­ti­mo­ny in the case of death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis, who was giv­en an unusu­al chance by the U.S. Supreme Court to ​“clear­ly estab­lish” his inno­cence after almost 20 years. Davis was con­vict­ed in 1991 of the shoot­ing of a Savannah police offi­cer based on eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny that iden­ti­fied him as the shoot­er. During the recent hear­ings in fed­er­al court, four wit­ness­es recanted their…

On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Billy Joe Magwood, an Alabama defen­dant con­vict­ed of a 1979 mur­der whose chal­lenge to the state’s death penal­ty law had been ruled untime­ly by low­er courts. Magwood’s first death sen­tence was over­turned, but he was sen­tenced to death a sec­ond time. When Magwood filed a habeas peti­tion chal­leng­ing his new death sen­tence, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that Magwood’s chal­lenge to his…

Judge Norman Fletcher served on the Georgia Supreme Court and was in the major­i­ty that upheld Troy Davis​’s orig­i­nal con­vic­tion and death sen­tence on direct appeal. However, Judge Fletcher has not­ed he was not on the court after many of the wit­ness­es from Davis’s tri­al recant­ed their tes­ti­mo­ny, and he prob­a­bly would have vot­ed in favor of a new evi­den­tiary hear­ing for Davis if he was on the court today. Judge Fletcher recent­ly wrote about the…