Publications & Testimony

The Death Penalty Information Center released the ​“The Death Penalty in 2009: Year End Report” on December 18, not­ing that the coun­try is expect­ed to fin­ish 2009 with the fewest death sen­tences since the U.S. Supreme Court rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1976. Eleven states con­sid­ered abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty this year, a sig­nif­i­cant increase in leg­isla­tive activ­i­ty from pre­vi­ous years, as the high costs and lack of mea­sur­able ben­e­fits asso­ci­at­ed with this…

A sin­gle death penal­ty case in Indiana can cost tax­pay­ers as much as $1 mil­lion. In Marion County, the costs of prepa­ra­tion for three poten­tial death penal­ty tri­als have reached $659,000 this year alone, accord­ing to the Public Defender Agency. A high-pro­file death penal­ty case in the same coun­ty has cost near­ly $850,000 and not all the bills are in. Pursuing a life sen­tence costs less than the death penal­ty, even con­sid­er­ing the expense of a con­vic­t’s longer incarceration,…

On December 8, the U.S. Supreme Court over­ruled a low­er fed­er­al court that had giv­en relief to Joseph Kindler, a Pennsylvania death row inmate. Kindler had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1982, but then escaped to Canada from the Philadelphia Detention Center in 1984. Prior to his escape, his attor­neys had filed post-ver­dict motions chal­leng­ing his con­vic­tion and sen­tence. Kindler was sub­se­quent­ly caught and, upon his return to the U.S., he tried…

Renowned death penal­ty defense attor­ney Andrea Lyon​’s forth­com­ing book, Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer, chron­i­cles her 30 years of expe­ri­ence rep­re­sent­ing clients in cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es. In all of the 19 cas­es where she rep­re­sent­ed defen­dants who were found guilty of cap­i­tal mur­der, jurors spared her clients’ lives. Lyon, who was fea­tured in the PBS doc­u­men­tary Race to Execution and was called the ​“angel of death row”…

Franklin E. Zimring is a dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor of law and schol­ar at the Berkeley School of Law who has fol­lowed the devel­op­ment of the mod­ern death penal­ty over many decades. Writing recent­ly in the National Law Journal, Prof. Zimring said the recent action by the American Law Institute to with­draw the death penal­ty pro­vi­sions from its Model Penal Code deprives the pun­ish­ment of any legal legit­i­ma­cy. “[T]he insti­tute has pulled…

On December 4, the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty held a hear­ing in Concord to exam­ine the cost of the death penaty in the state. The twen­ty-two mem­ber Commission, led by retired Judge Walter Murphy, has been charged with con­sid­er­ing sev­er­al issues, includ­ing whether the death penal­ty is a deter­rent, if it is arbi­trar­i­ly applied, and if it cov­ers the appro­pri­ate crimes. The Commission is con­sid­er­ing alter­na­tives to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and…