Publications & Testimony

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…

Joseph P. Nadeau, who served on New Hampshire​’s Supreme Court for six years and as a judge for 37 years, recent­ly tes­ti­fied before the state’s death penal­ty com­mis­sion about his oppo­si­tion to the prac­tice. In an op-ed, Judge Nadeau sum­ma­rized the moral and prac­ti­cal rea­sons why he believes cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment should be repealed. ​“Our think­ing evolves, as peo­ple, tech­nol­o­gy, and soci­eties progress,” he said. ​“And what is accept­able at one time in our history…

Amnesty International recent­ly released its annu­al report on inter­na­tion­al abus­es and progress in the field of human rights: ​“The State of the World’s Human Rights.” The report cov­ers January to December 2009 and address­es human rights issues in every coun­try around the world. The report also high­lights coun­tries’ involve­ment in inter­na­tion­al and region­al human rights treaties. Among the nations in the Americas, the United States had the most active…

Voices of the Death Penalty Debate: A Citizen’s Guide to Capital Punishment is a new book that explores argu­ments for and against the death penal­ty through tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en at the his­toric 2004 and 2005 hear­ings in New York on whether the state’s death penal­ty should be rein­stat­ed. The state’s law was struck down by the N.Y. Court of Appeals in 2004. Authored by Russell Murphy, a Suffolk University Law School pro­fes­sor, the book walks read­ers through tes­ti­mo­ny from…