Publications & Testimony

Los Angeles Chief of Police William Bratton recent­ly defend­ed San Francisco Distrist Attorney Kamala Harris for not seek­ing the death penal­ty against a sus­pect in a police killing. ​“It’s much cheap­er to sen­tence them to life in prison and throw away the key,” said Bratton, who is endors­ing Harris in seek­ing elec­tion as California’s Attorney…

A recent study pub­lished by a Duke University econ­o­mist revealed North Carolina could save $11 mil­lion annu­al­ly if it dropped the death penal­ty. Philip J. Cook, a pro­fes­sor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, cal­cu­lat­ed the extra state costs of the death penal­ty dur­ing fis­cal years 2005 and 2006. He cal­cu­lat­ed over $21 mil­lion worth of expens­es that would have been saved if the death penal­ty had been repealed. The total…

County esti­mates in Texas indi­cate that the death penal­ty sys­tem is much more expen­sive than sen­tenc­ing inmates to life impris­on­ment. Gray County spent near­ly $1 mil­lion seek­ing the death penal­ty against Levi King, even though he plead­ed guilty to mur­der. Moreover, these costs do not include the cost of appeals, which will fur­ther increase the cost of the cap­i­tal case, nor the costs of cas­es in which the death penal­ty is sought but not giv­en. By com­par­i­son, a non-death…

A recent New York Times edi­to­r­i­al com­ment­ed on the new one-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col used in Ohio for the first time on December 8, but con­clud­ed that ​“the exe­cu­tion only rein­forced that any form of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is legal­ly sus­pect and moral­ly wrong.” The Times agreed with the late Justice Harry Blackmun who called such manip­u­la­tions ​“tinker[ing] with the machin­ery of death.” The edi­to­r­i­al also not­ed the risks of exeuct­ing the…

On December 15 the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights marked the 20^th anniver­sary of an inter­na­tion­al death penal­ty treaty by call­ing for the uni­ver­sal abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Navi Pillay, the top UN human rights offi­cial, urged all states to adopt the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The pro­to­col, which bars the death penal­ty, was intro­duced in 1989. ​“Abolishing the death…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Virginian-Pilot called for elim­i­nat­ing the death penal­ty as a good way to address the $3.5 bil­lion gap in the state’s bud­get. ​“Doing away with the option of a death sen­tence makes sense on sev­er­al lev­els,” the edi­tors wrote. ​“It would save the state from hav­ing to pay fees asso­ci­at­ed with lengthy tri­als and years of appeals. It would end the agony of repeat­ed court hear­ings for the fam­i­lies of vic­tims. It would elim­i­nate the four per­pet­u­al­ly understaffed…