Publications & Testimony

On April 4, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the opinions of two lower federal courts that had granted a new sentencing hearing to Scott Pinholster, who is on death row in California. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had held that Pinholster’s attorneys provided inadequate representation in not investigating evidence of severe brain damage. The attorneys should have pursued medical evidence that Pinholster was an epileptic who suffered blows to the head in two car accidents. He…

On March 29, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed (5 – 4) a judgment of $14 million against the District Attorney’s Office of New Orleans for withholding evidence in the case of John Thompson. Thompson had been convicted and sentenced to death but was later exonerated after the withheld evidence, casting serious doubt about his guilt, was revealed through the work of a private investigator. Thompson spent 18 years in prison including 14 years on death row, and faced imminent execution several times.

As Texas prepares to execute Cleve Foster on April 5, a new report released by the ACLU of Texas and Northwestern University’s Center for International Human Rights reveals that procedures for euthanizing animals in the state are more carefully regulated than the protocol for executing death row inmates. In March, Texas announced that it will continue to use a risky three-drug protocol for executions, and will replace the critical first drug, which is in short supply, with a new drug…

The Texas Criminal Jurisprudence Committee of the House of Representatives heard testimony on March 29 regarding HB 1641, a bill that would put a hold on executions while the death penalty was being studied. Charles Terrell, former Chairman of the state’s Department of Criminal Justice, supported the moratorium in a statement to the committee, expressing concerns about: “fairness to those convicted on the limited testimony of witnesses, racial fairness in some areas of our state, the absence of…

A new report issued by Amnesty International, Death Sentences and Executions 2010, shows a global trend away from the use of the death penalty. According to the report, only four countries in the G20 (representing the world’s major economies) carried out executions in 2010 (China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the U.S.), 36 of the 53 African Union member states are abolitionist in law or in practice, and only 21 of the 192 UN member states carried out executions in 2010. The report stated, “At the…

Gil Garcetti, the former district attorney of Los Angeles who pursued numerous death sentences, recently said California’s death penalty is dysfunctional and the resources spent on it should be diverted to more pressing needs. In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Garcetti said the death penalty causes ongoing torment to family members and friends of murder victims: “The living victims of a particular crime might think that a death verdict provides closure, but for most, there was no such…

Earlier in March, hearings were held in Connecticut before the House Judiciary Committee on a bill to replace the death penalty for future crimes with a sentence of life without parole. Many religious leaders, scholars, former death row inmates, and families of murder victims families testified in favor of the bill. Catholic Bishop Peter Rosazza, retired auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Hartford, said, “The death penalty diminishes us all. We cannot teach respect for life by taking a…