Publications & Testimony

Wilbert Rideau, a for­mer death row inmate in Louisiana who has since been released from prison, recent­ly pub­lished his mem­oir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance. Rideau was sen­tenced to death at the age of 19 for killing a woman in pan­ic dur­ing a botched rob­bery attempt. While on death row, he under­went a trans­for­ma­tion and, after his sen­tence was com­mut­ed to life, he…

A bill that would change California​’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure unan­i­mous­ly passed the Senate Public Safety Committee on April 20. Senate Bill 1018, authored by Sen. Tom Harman, would require the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to devel­op and imple­ment a one-drug lethal injec­tion process involv­ing an appro­pri­ate anes­thet­ic. California has had a de fac­to mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions since February 2006 when a fed­er­al judge held that…

The AFP recent­ly exam­ined the time an inmate spends on death row between sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion and ques­tioned if inmates are being pun­ished twice with long-term impris­on­ment and exe­cu­tion. They found an aver­age inmate spends 13 years on death row, with some spend­ing 30 years or more. Craig Haney, pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the University of California, Santa Cruz and expert on pris­on­ers held in iso­la­tion, said,​“People on death row live under the…

In California, fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims Amber Dubois and Chelsea King agreed to a life sen­tence with­out parole for the girls’ killer, John Albert Gardner. Brent King, Chelsea’s father, said that agree­ing with County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis’ deci­sion not to seek the death penal­ty for his daugth­er’s killer was​“tor­tur­ous,” but so would have been a death penal­ty tri­al and the years of appeals that fol­low. Dumanis said there was enough…

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A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Salt Lake Tribune calls for Utahns and their elect­ed lead­ers to con­sid­er aban­don­ing the death penal­ty cit­ing that​“state-spon­­sored killing of a human being, no mat­ter how heinous the crime, is per­mit­ted by a sys­tem that has been proven beyond doubt to be inher­ent­ly capri­cious, unfair and shock­ing­ly fal­li­ble.” The edi­to­r­i­al also point­ed to the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty nation­wide, with an all-time high of 328…

Scott Phillips, a soci­ol­o­gy and crim­i­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the University of Denver, pub­lished a study last month in the Law & Society Review focus­ing on the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences in rela­tion to the vic­tim’s social sta­tus. Phillips stud­ied cap­i­tal cas­es in Harris County (Houston), Texas, between 1992 and 1999 and found that the social sta­tus of the vic­tim in the under­ly­ing mur­der had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on whether the death…

The Ohio Attorney General​’s Office recent­ly released its annu­al Capital Crimes Report, ana­lyz­ing the state’s death penal­ty cas­es and death row pop­u­la­tion. In 2009, there was only one death sen­tence hand­ed down in Ohio, mir­ror­ing a nation­wide trend of declin­ing death sen­tences. This was the fewest death sen­tences in a year since Ohio rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty. The report indi­cat­ed that over half of the cur­rent death row population…

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund recent­ly released its Fall 2009 edi­tion of Death Row USA, a report detail­ing death row pop­u­la­tions across the United States. According to the report, California, Florida and Texas con­tin­ue to lead the nation in the num­ber of death row inmates, with California (694) hav­ing a death row pop­u­la­tion almost twice as large as either Florida (395) or Texas (339). In addi­tion, while Florida’s and Texas’ death…

In California, a state that is spend­ing $137 mil­lion per year on the death penal­ty, many homi­cide inves­ti­ga­tions have been put on hold due to a bud­get cri­sis in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is forc­ing offi­cers to sus­pend work on their cas­es and take days or weeks off because of new over­time lim­its. One of the LAPD’s most pro­duc­tive inves­ti­ga­tors sat idle for 6 weeks, unable to fol­low old leads or to pick up on new ones because he…