Publications & Testimony

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an op-ed, Judge Nadeau sum­ma­rized the moral and prac­ti­cal rea­sons why he believes cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment should be repealed.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…

Texas Judge Paul C. Murphy recent­ly ordered pros­e­cu­tors to hand over key evi­dence from a 1989 mur­der case to the Innocence Project and the Texas Observer for DNA test­ing. In 2007, the Innocence Project and the Observer filed suit to obtain a one-inch strand of hair that alleged­ly impli­cat­ed Claude Howard Jones (pic­tured) in the killing of a liquor store own­er in San Jacinto County. Other than vague eye­wit­ness accounts and…

On June 14, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Albert Holland, who lost his right to file a fed­er­al appeal of his death sen­tence when his lawyer missed the 1‑year dead­line estab­lished under the Anti-ter­ror­ism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Holland’s attor­ney’s con­duct in miss­ing the dead­line was not egre­gious enough to war­rant set­ting aside the imposed…