Publications & Testimony

A report released by Amnesty International in July looks at recent developments in the lethal injection controversy in the U.S. and provides an overview of the death penalty since it was reinstated in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia. Amnesty’s report, entitled “An Embarrassment of Hitches: Reflections on the Death Penalty, 35 Years After Gregg v. Georgia, As States Scramble for Lethal Injection Drugs,” begins with a discussion of a lawsuit filed by attorneys for Arizona death row inmate Donald Beaty…

On July 29, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the state’s Forensic Science Commission (FSC) does not have authority to review evidence regarding the possible innocence of Cameron Todd Willingham (pictured), who was executed in 2004. Willingham was convicted of setting the fire that killed his three children, but investigtions by prominent forensic scientists have discredited the evidence of arson presented at trial. Abbott said evidence that was tested or offered into evidence prior…

On July 28, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the scheduled August 18 execution of Larry Swearingen (pictured) in order to consider new evidence that might prove his innocence. Swearingen was convicted of the 1998 murder of Melissa Trotter, whose body was found in the Sam Houston National Forest. Trotter was last seen alive with Swearingen. Forensic scientists who examined the evidence from Trotter’s body have said that she could not have been in the forest for longer than two weeks…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to offer a new and more comprehensive version of our Execution Database. The new database includes information on the county where the crime was committed and on the gender of victim, in addition to the information available in our previous database. The database includes such categories as Race of Defendant and Victim, Foreign Nationals, Method of Execution, and Age at Execution. Moreover, results of searches are sortable by each search category.

O.H. Eaton Jr. (pictured), who served as a judge for many years in Florida, recently wrote an op-ed in the Birmingham News calling for an end to Alabama’s law that allows judges to override juries’ sentencing recommendations in death penalty cases. Eaton, who presided over numerous capital cases during his 24 years on the bench, said that his experience convinced him that the practive of judicial override is unfair. Citing a report recently published by the Equal Justice Initiative, Eaton noted…

On July 25, the Florida Supreme Court (4 – 3) stayed the August 2 execution of Manuel Valle to allow a lower court to consider a challenge to a new lethal injection drug. Last month, Florida substituted pentobarbital for sodium thiopental as the first drug in its three-drug protocol for executions. Florida and many other states were forced to seek alternatives to sodium thiopental when the drug’s sole U.S. manufacturer decided to stop its production. Valle’s lawyers contend that the use of…

Marcus Robinson will be the first North Carolina death row inmate to have a sentencing challenge heard in court based on the state’s 2009 Racial Justice Act. According to the act, a death row inmate who can establish through statistical studies that his sentence was racially discriminatory can seek to have it commuted to life in prison. Robinson’s lawyers plan to argue that he received a death sentence partly because he is black and his victim was white They plan to cite several North Carolina…

The capital arraignment on July 20 of Army Major Nidal Hasan for the murder of 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009 has brought attention to the death penalty in the United States Military. There are currently six inmates on the military death row, which is located in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In the last two years, four men have been removed from the military death row after their sentences were reduced to life. The Uniform Code of Military Justice allows the death penalty for 15…