Publications & Testimony

On November 30, the United States Supreme Court over­turned the death sen­tence of George Porter, a Korean War vet­er­an from Florida who had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1988. The Court stat­ed that Porter’s tri­al lawyer failed to inves­ti­gate and present ample mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence, includ­ing the fact that Porter’s bat­tle ser­vice in the war left him severe­ly trau­ma­tized. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit had held that such evi­dence would not have…

Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, has writ­ten an eval­u­a­tion of Florida​’s death penal­ty to be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing edi­tion of the Elon University Law Review. The eval­u­a­tion is based on a study by an assess­ment team spon­sored by the American Bar Association. Florida is one of the lead­ing states in sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death, but it also has the most death row exon­er­a­tions of any state in the…

On November 23, Kentucky Public Advocate Ed Monahan and Louisville Metro Chief Public Defender Dan Goyette called on the gov­er­nor and the state’s Attorney General to stay all exe­cu­tions until an assess­ment team formed by the American Bar Association can objec­tive­ly review the state’s death penal­ty. Monahan and Goyette wrote let­ters ask­ing Attorney General Jack Conway not to request any fur­ther exe­cu­tion war­rants and asking…

James Tyrone Woodson’s death sen­tence was over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 because the jury had not been allowed to con­sid­er any mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in his life or about his periph­er­al role in the crime. The Court not only reject­ed Woodson’s death sen­tence, but held that a manda­to­ry death penal­ty sys­tem was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Woodson had been con­vict­ed in 1974 of first-degree mur­der, which was auto­mat­i­cal­ly pun­ish­able by the death penal­ty under North…

The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates is a book by John Temple about the coura­geous work of a death penal­ty defense attor­ney in the south. Ken Rose is an attor­ney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in North Carolina. He has han­dled many cap­i­tal cas­es, but the focus of this book is his defense of Bo Jones, a men­tal­ly hand­i­capped farm­hand con­vict­ed of a mur­der that occurred in 1987 and…

Virginia has not had a death ver­dict from a jury since March 2008, the longest stretch of time with­out a death ver­dict since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in the 1970s. Nationally, there has also been a decline in death sen­tences: accord­ing to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 115 death sen­tences in 2007, 65% less than the 326 that were hand­ed down in 1995. In Virginia, part of this decline might be attrib­uted to a change in state law made…

On November 16, the United States Supreme Court accept­ed for review and hand­ed down a per curi­am deci­sion in Wong v. Belmontes (No. 08 – 1263). The Court rein­stat­ed Fernando Belmontes’ death sen­tence and over­turned the deci­sion of the Ninth Circuit grant­i­ng relief because of inef­fec­tive­ness of coun­sel. Belmontes was sen­tenced to death for mur­der­ing a woman dur­ing a rob­bery in 1981 in California. The appeals court ruled in 2008 that…