Publications & Testimony

Desert Storm veteran Cleve Foster (pictured), who faced execution in Texas for the third time this year for a murder nearly a decade ago, was granted another stay by the U.S. Supreme Court on September 20. The Supreme Court stopped Foster’s execution twice before in 2011. In January, six hours before his scheduled execution, the Justices granted a reprieve to allow them more time to consider his appeal. In April, the Court again halted his execution when his lawyers sought a rehearing, claiming…

After a hearing on September 19, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency to Troy Davis who is facing execution on September 21, despite presentation of testimony casting doubt on his guilt. Brian Kammer, one of Davis’s attorneys, said, “I am utterly shocked and disappointed at the failure of our justice system at all levels to correct a miscarriage of justice.” Davis’s claims of innocence have received international attention, and calls for clemency have been made by Pope…

In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Daily News, Don Heller (pictured), a Republican, former prosecutor, and the author of the 1978 ballot initiative that reinstated California’s death penalty, voiced his support for replacing the death penalty with life without parole. “It makes no sense to prop up such a failed system,” he wrote. He urged California voters to support a new ballot initiative that would abolish the state’s death penalty, citing the system’s “staggering” costs and the risk of…

William S. Sessions, the former director of the FBI and a former federal judge and prosecutor, recently wrote an op-ed calling for the commutation of Troy Davis’s death sentence to life in prison without parole. Writing in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sessions said that “serious questions about Davis’ guilt, highlighted by witness recantations, allegations of police coercion and a lack of relevant physical evidence, continue to plague his conviction.” He called upong the Georgia Board of…

The Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Maureen O’Connor, has initiated a review of the state’s death penalty to determine if changes should be made and asking, “Is the system we have the best we can do?” To conduct the study, Justice O’Connor called for a 20-person committee of judges, prosecuting attorneys, criminal defense lawyers, lawmakers and academic experts convened by the state’s Supreme Court and the Ohio State Bar Association. She stated the review “will make sure the current…

Retired Alabama Judge Loyd Little (pictured) recently changed his mind about a death sentence he imposed on Derrick Mason in 1995 for a murder during a convenience store robbery. Mason is scheduled for execution on September 22. Judge Little wrote a letter to be submitted to Alabama Governor Robert Bentley requesting that Mason’s sentence be commuted to life in prison without parole. The judge explained the change in his thinking: “Years of experience and seeing so many other capital murder…

Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis will have a third clemency hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on September 19, two days before his scheduled execution. The hearing will allow Davis to present witnesses the Board did not hear from in prior hearings as well as “renewed claims of innocence” regarding his conviction for killing Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail in 1989. Doubts about Davis’ guilt were raised when some prosecution witnesses changed their stories…

Linda Geffin (pictured) was one of the Texas prosecutors who won a conviction and death sentence for Duane Buck in 1997. She is now the division chief of the Special Prosecutions Unit in the Office of the Harris County Attorney, and she is urging Gov. Rick Perry and other state officials to stop Buck’s September 15 execution because improper race evidence was put before the jury considering his sentence. In a letter to state officials, Geffin said that former Texas Attorney General John Cornyn…

Of the 16 death sentences that have been imposed since the U.S. military made significant changes to its death penalty system in 1984, 10 have been overturned and all the defendants were resentenced to life. There have been no executions, and the 6 remaining cases are still under appeal. Military appellate courts overturned the sentences because of mistakes made at many levels of the military’s judicial system, including inadequate defense representation, prosecutorial misconduct, and improper…