Publications & Testimony

Cert. grant­ed, judg­ment vacat­ed, and remand­ed June 29, 2010…

On July 30, the Court of Appeal in Kenya unan­i­mous­ly held that manda­to­ry death sen­tences are uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, vio­lat­ing the right to life and inflict­ing inhu­man pun­ish­ment since the law does not pro­vide indi­vid­u­als the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. As a result, hun­dreds of pris­on­ers will be giv­en new sen­tenc­ing hear­ings at which they will be able to present rea­sons why they should be spared a death sen­tence. New procedures…

An exe­cu­tion date of September 23 was recent­ly set for Teresa Lewis, the only woman on Virginia​’s death row. Although a num­ber of oth­er peo­ple were involved in the same crime, includ­ing the actu­al shoot­ers of the two vic­tims, Lewis was the only per­son sen­tenced to death. She pled guilty at tri­al. Since being sent to death row in 2002, Lewis has tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty and apol­o­gized for her actions. She has had an exem­plary record while in…

In a pre­lim­i­nary report, the Texas Forensic Science Commission recent­ly found that fire inves­ti­ga­tors used flawed sci­ence in the case that led to the death sen­tence and exe­cu­tion of Cameron Todd Willingham. Willingham was exe­cut­ed in 2004, hav­ing been con­vict­ed of set­ting the fire that killed his three chil­dren. Willingham had always main­tained his inno­cence and said the fire could have been an acci­dent. The Commission…

A recent study in North Carolina found that the odds of a defen­dant receiv­ing a death sen­tence were three times high­er if the per­son was con­vict­ed of killing a white per­son than if he had killed a black per­son. The study, con­duct­ed by Professors Michael Radelet and Glenn Pierce, exam­ined 15,281 homi­cides in the state between 1980 and 2007, which result­ed in 368 death sen­tences. Even after account­ing for additional factors,…

A recent poll con­duct­ed in California showed that sup­port for life with­out parole for first-degree mur­der has increased among reg­is­tered vot­ers since 2000. When asked which sen­tence they pre­ferred for a first-degree mur­der­er, 42% of reg­is­tered vot­ers said they pre­ferred life with­out parole and 41% said they pre­ferred the death penal­ty. In 2000, when vot­ers were asked the same ques­tion, 37% chose life with­out parole while 44% chose the…

Dan Glode, a for­mer dis­trict attor­ney in Lincoln County, Oregon, recent­ly crit­i­cized the death penal­ty for​“the enor­mous expense in dol­lars and emo­tion­al cap­i­tal [it takes] for the fam­i­lies of homi­cide vic­tims.” Writing in the Newport News-Times, he expe­ri­enced crime both as a pros­e­cu­tor and as a rel­a­tive of a mur­der vic­tim:​“The emo­tion­al cost on the fam­i­lies of the vic­tim is also enor­mous. I have some knowledge of…

Terrence Dwyer, for­mer­ly with the New York Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation, recent­ly chron­i­cled the evo­lu­tion of his think­ing about the death penal­ty and whether it serves the needs of law enforce­ment. Dwyer cit­ed sev­er­al exam­ples of recent exon­er­a­tions and not­ed,​“Clearly, by keep­ing the death penal­ty in place, we run the unac­cept­able risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent. Those of us in law enforce­ment do our best to take the…

David Garland, a pro­fes­sor of law and soci­ol­o­gy at New York University, recent­ly addressed some com­mon myths regard­ing the death penal­ty in America. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Garland pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion chal­leng­ing the com­mon wisdom about…

A hear­ing to set an exe­cu­tion date for Texas death row inmate Humberto Leal was post­poned after the pre­sid­ing judge received a let­ter from a high-rank­ing U.S. State Department offi­cial. Leal, a Mexican cit­i­zen who was sen­tenced to death in 1995, had already been trans­ferred to Bexar County Jail for the hear­ing to set the exe­cu­tion date. Harold Hongju Koh, a top legal advis­er to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrote the…