Publications & Testimony

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…

Lawyers for Khanh Dinh Phan asked the Georgia Supreme Court to dis­miss the charges against him or to bar the state from seek­ing the death penal­ty because the state has been unable to pay for Phan’s defense. After his arrest in 2005, Chris Adams and Bruce Harvey were appoint­ed to rep­re­sent Phan.​“The state of Georgia has made Mr. Harvey and myself pot­ted plants,” Adams recent­ly said.​“We are lawyers in name only. … The state of Georgia has failed, and failed…

Taiwan​’s Minister of Justice, Wang Ching-feng, recent­ly resigned from her post after express­ing her strong oppo­si­tion to the country’s death penal­ty. Since her posi­tion was essen­tial to her beliefs but incom­pat­i­ble with those of Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou and some mem­bers of her own polit­i­cal par­ty, she decid­ed not to con­tin­ue in office.​“I would rather step down than sign any death war­rant,” she said.​“If these con­victs can have an…

Sam Millsap, a for­mer Texas dis­trict attor­ney from San Antonio, recent­ly called for DNA test­ing in the case of Hank Skinner, who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on March 24. Texas has so far refused to con­duct addi­tion­al DNA tests on crit­i­cal evi­dence from the crime scene that could sup­port Skinner’s claim of inno­cence. For the last decade, the state has blocked DNA test­ing of key pieces of evi­dence, includ­ing a knife that might…

On March 8, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland post­poned the exe­cu­tion of Lawrence Reynolds, who was found uncon­scious in his death row cell hours before he was to be dri­ven to the exe­cu­tion facil­i­ty. Reynolds, who was sen­tenced to die for a mur­der in 1994, appar­ent­ly took an over­dose of pills despite being under a 72-hour watch that includes fre­quent mon­i­tor­ing by prison guards. He was found uncon­scious in his cell around 11:30 pm, and was…

A recent arti­cle by Prof. Jeffrey Kirchmeier of the City University of New York School of Law enti­tled,​“The Undiscovered Country: Execution Competency & Comprehending Death” explores whether men­tal­ly dis­abled inmates who do not under­stand that exe­cu­tion means the end of their phys­i­cal life should be spared. Kirchmeier exam­ines Supreme Court prece­dent under the Eighth Amendment that requires that a con­demned defen­dant be com­pe­tent in order to be…

Most of those orig­i­nal­ly con­demned to death in North Carolina even­tu­al­ly received less­er sen­tences when their cas­es were con­clud­ed, accord­ing to Professor Frank Baumgartner, a researcher at the University of North Carolina. Many of those sen­tenced to death received a new tri­al because their first tri­al was seri­ous­ly flawed. At their sub­se­quent tri­als, the vast major­i­ty were sen­tenced to a pun­ish­ment less than death,…