Publications & Testimony

In North Carolina, Kristin Parks of Disability Rights N.C. and John Tote of the Mental Health Association‑N.C. point­ed to the case of Abdullah El-Amin Shareef as illus­trat­ing the need for a law exempt­ing the men­tall ill from the death penal­ty. A jury recent­ly sen­tenced Shareef to life in prison with­out parole in a case where pros­e­cu­tors had sought the death penal­ty. In April 2004, Shareef com­mit­ted a sense­less crime that…

Kathleen Garcia, a vic­tims’ advo­cate and expert on trau­mat­ic grief, recent­ly shared her opin­ions on the death penal­ty in New Hampshire, a state that is study­ing the issue through its Commission on Capital Punishment. Garcia, a mem­ber of New Jersey’s Death Penalty Study Commission, wrote,​“Make no mis­take – I am a con­ser­v­a­tive, a vic­tims’ advo­cate and a death penal­ty sup­port­er. But my real life expe­ri­ence has taught me that as long as the…

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled on March 25 that the cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion of Jamie Ryan Weis could pro­ceed despite the defen­dan­t’s claims that a lack of state fund­ing for cap­i­tal defense has deprived him of effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion and a speedy tri­al. Weis, who was arrest­ed 4 years ago, was first appoint­ed two defense lawyers with death penal­ty expe­ri­ence but the agency that funds defense lawyers in cap­i­tal cas­es could not pay them.

When cit­i­zens of oth­er coun­tries are arrest­ed in the U.S., spe­cial noti­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures are required under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, a treaty that the U.S. has signed and rat­i­fied. These same pro­ce­dures apply to U.S. cit­i­zens arrest­ed in oth­er coun­tries. There are over 130 peo­ple on death row in the U.S. from oth­er coun­tries, and many of them were not afford­ed their noti­fi­ca­tion rights under the Vienna Convention. Linda…

Texas is mov­ing clos­er to car­ry­ing out the exe­cu­tion of Henry Skinner on March 24, despite the fact that crit­i­cal evi­dence from the crime scene, which could point to a dif­fer­ent sus­pect, has not been sub­ject­ed to DNA test­ing . Many of the major state news­pa­pers in Texas have edi­to­ri­al­ized for a delay to the exe­cu­tion to allow for the DNA test­ing. On March 22, the Texas Board of Parole and Pardons refused to rec­om­mend clemency for…

Gregory Taylor recent­ly became the first per­son exon­er­at­ed by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, the only state-run agency in the coun­try with the pow­er to over­turn con­vic­tions based on claims of inno­cence. Taylor had been con­vict­ed of the bru­tal mur­der of a pros­ti­tute, a crime for which he might have been exe­cut­ed in many states. In 1993, pros­e­cu­tors relied part­ly on a lab report indi­cat­ing that blood was found in…

The Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court recent­ly warned that cuts to the state bud­get are mak­ing it increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for courts to car­ry out their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly man­dat­ed duties. Chief Justice Carol Hunstein stat­ed that the court’s back­log has grown as mon­ey has dwin­dled.​“The con­se­quences of these cuts … hit every­one, threat­en­ing the basic con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of civ­il lit­i­gants and crim­i­nal defendants as…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Spokane (WA) Spokesman-Review called for elim­i­na­tion of the death penal­ty in light of its high costs and the state’s tight bud­get. Executions are uncer­tain and delayed by the neces­si­ty of appeals to ensure the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the tri­al. The edi­to­r­i­al cit­ed a study by the Washington Bar Association that iden­ti­fied over $600,000 in addi­tion­al costs for a cap­i­tal case:​“death penalty cases…

The results of a poll of police chiefs recent­ly fea­tured in DPIC’s report​“Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis” is now avail­able in the form of a slide pre­sen­ta­tion on the Web, suit­able for use in work­shops or dis­cus­sion groups. The poll, com­mis­sioned by DPIC and con­duct­ed by R.T. Strategies of Washington, DC, sur­veyed a nation­al sam­ple of 500 ran­dom­ly select­ed U.S. police chiefs on questions…

A recent arti­cle in the Akron Law Review asks whether the Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA) is in com­pli­ance with the Sixth Amendment​’s right to con­front wit­ness­es because it allows hearsay evi­dence in deter­min­ing whether a defen­dant is eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. During a typ­i­cal crim­i­nal tri­al, the accused has the right to chal­lenge and cross exam­ine the tes­ti­mo­ny of state wit­ness­es who must appear in per­son. But in a death…