Publications & Testimony

A new book by David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution, cap­tures the author’s per­son­al and legal expe­ri­ences in rep­re­sent­ing over 100 inmates on death row. The book is a per­son­al mem­oir of Dow’s encounter with the death penal­ty sys­tem, as he rep­re­sents defen­dants and wit­ness­es their exe­cu­tions. Publisher’s Weekly called the book ​“sober­ing, grip­ping and can­did.” Dahlia Lithwick of Slate said it is ​“a pow­er­ful col­lage of…

The Senate Judiciary Committee in Kansas recent­ly advanced (7 – 4) leg­is­la­tion that would elim­i­nate cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Kansas enact­ed its cur­rent death penal­ty law in 1994, but has not exe­cut­ed any­one for more than 40 years. There are cur­rent­ly ten men on the state’s death row, though none are close to exe­cu­tion. The abo­li­tion leg­is­la­tion, which was orig­i­nal­ly intro­duced by Republican Sen. Carolyn McGinn to…

Edward Lee Elmore, South Carolina’s longest-serv­ing death row inmate, was spared from exe­cu­tion when a state cir­cuit court ruled he suf­fered from men­tal retar­da­tion. The sen­tence rever­sal came almost 28 years after Elmore was sent to death row in 1982 for a sex­u­al assault and mur­der, and 8 years after the U.S. Supreme Court held in Atkins v. Virginia that the exe­cu­tion of the men­tal­ly retard­ed is a cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, and there­fore violates…

Michael Traynor, President Emeritus of the pres­ti­gious American Law Institute (ALI), called the ALI’s recent with­draw­al of its mod­el death penal­ty law ​“a strik­ing repu­di­a­tion from the very orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vid­ed the blue­print for death penal­ty laws in this coun­try.” He not­ed that the ALI had care­ful­ly reviewed the death penal­ty process, and that ​“Now, after search­ing analy­sis by our coun­try’s top legal minds, the insti­tute has concluded…

Henry Skinner is sched­uled (update below) for exe­cu­tion in Texas on February 24 despite the lack of DNA test­ing of crit­i­cal evi­dence from the crime scene that could lead to his exon­er­a­tion. Skinner has always main­tained his inno­cence of the 1993 mur­der of his girl­friend and her two grown sons in Tampa, Texas. At his tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tion pre­sent­ed the results of selec­tive DNA test­ing on some of the crime evi­dence that tend­ed to prove Skinner’s pres­ence at…

The Death Penalty Information Center has recent­ly updat­ed its infor­ma­tion pack­et enti­tled ​“Death Penalty Resources for Communities of Faith.” This pack­et was ini­tial­ly devel­oped to help a wide spec­trum of reli­gious groups address the death penal­ty by pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion, dis­cus­sion ques­tions, and mul­ti-media resources. These mate­ri­als offer a frame­work use­ful for any dis­cus­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and do not direct­ly involve reli­gious or moral instruc­tions. Each packet…