Publications & Testimony

On May 24, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to con­sid­er whether a Texas death row inmate’s request for DNA test­ing can be con­sid­ered as a civ­il rights claim rather than part of his death penal­ty appeal. The Court stayed Hank Skinner​’s exe­cu­tion on March 24, just one hour before he was to be put to death. Skinner, who has always main­tained his inno­cence of the 1993 mur­ders of his girl­friend and her two sons, has requested that…

Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry grant­ed clemen­cy to Richard Tandy Smith, who was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death for a 1986 shoot­ing dur­ing an alleged drug deal. Earlier this year, the Pardon and Parole Board approved a clemen­cy rec­om­men­da­tion for Smith and for­ward­ed it to the gov­er­nor for approval. Governor Henry said,​“This was a very dif­fi­cult deci­sion and one that I did not take light­ly. I am always reluc­tant to inter­vene in a capital…

The Ohio Parole Board recent­ly rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy for death row inmate Richard Nields, who was sen­tenced to death for killing his live-in girl­friend dur­ing an argu­ment in 1997. The board ques­tioned the valid­i­ty of med­ical evi­dence used at tri­al that helped sup­port the death sen­tence. Testimony pro­vid­ed by a doc­­tor-in-train­ing indi­cat­ed the vic­tim had been beat­en and stran­gled. However, the deputy coro­ner and super­vi­sor of the…

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul E. Pfeifer recent­ly said all cur­rent death row cas­es should be reviewed to dis­cern which ones war­rant exe­cu­tion and which ones should be com­mut­ed to life in prison with­out parole.​“There are prob­a­bly few peo­ple in Ohio that are proud of the fact we are exe­cut­ing peo­ple at the same pace as Texas,” Justice Pfeifer said.​“When the next gov­er­nor is sworn in, I think the state would be well served if a blue-rib­bon panel was…

Twenty clients of Texas defense attor­ney Jerry Guerinot have been sen­tenced to death – a num­ber high­er than the death row pop­u­la­tions of 18 death penal­ty states around the coun­try. Guerinot also rep­re­sent­ed Linda Carty, a British nation­al who was fac­ing the death penal­ty for arrang­ing a mur­der. She asserts she was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed by Guerinot. He failed to vis­it her for three months after being appoint­ed her coun­sel, did not…

United States District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis recent­ly wrote a let­ter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ask­ing that the gov­ern­ment recon­sid­er seek­ing the fed­er­al death penal­ty in the tri­al of a reput­ed mob boss. According to Judge Garaufis’s let­ter, prepa­ra­tions for the mur­der tri­al of Vinny Basciano in Brooklyn, N.Y., have already cost the gov­ern­ment over $3 mil­lion in legal fees since 2005, and the trial…

Over the past two years, Ohio has exe­cut­ed more inmates than any oth­er state except Texas. Since resum­ing exe­cu­tions in 1999, Ohio has exe­cut­ed 38 peo­ple, more than any oth­er state out­side of the South in that time peri­od. As in the South, race appears to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in who receives the death penal­ty. In the Ohio cas­es result­ing in an exe­cu­tion, 75% of the vic­tims in the under­ly­ing mur­der were white.

In a recent address to lawyers and judges at a judi­cial con­fer­ence, retir­ing U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens explained the evo­lu­tion of his views on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the death penal­ty. Regarding his 2008 asser­tion that the death penal­ty should be abol­ished, Justice Stevens elab­o­rat­ed,​“The risk of an incor­rect deci­sion has increased,” and that because of advances in DNA test­ing that have led to free­ing some innocent convicts,…

A recent poll by the Washington Post revealed more Marylanders pre­fer a sen­tence of life in prison with no chance of parole over the death penal­ty for some­one con­vict­ed of mur­der– by 49% to 40%. Maryland has had a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions since 2006, after the state’s high­est court ruled that pro­ce­dures for lethal injec­tions had not been prop­er­ly adopt­ed. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley spon­sored legislation to…

A recent issue of the award-win­n­ing prison news mag­a­zine, The Angolite, fea­tured a sto­ry by inmate Lane Nelson about Gerald Bordelon, the first per­son to be exe­cut­ed in Louisiana since 2002. Bordelon expe­dit­ed his own exe­cu­tion by choos­ing to waive his appeals, includ­ing his direct appeal, which was pre­vi­ous­ly thought to be a manda­to­ry part of the state’s death penal­ty process. Bordelon volunteered for…