Publications & Testimony

As Yakima County, Washington, faces the possibility of its first death penalty trial since 1989, the danger that the high cost of a capital case could drain the county’s budget is a deep concern. Harold Delia, Yakima County court administrative consultant questioned the wisdom of seeking the death penalty against a defendant recently charged with murder, “You really have to wonder whether this really makes sense when you look at the cost-benefit analysis,” he said. “In Yakima County, we have no…

On March 21, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from death-row inmate Cory Maples (pictured), who is facing execution because of a missed filing deadline in his state appeal. Copies of an Alabama court ruling in his case were sent to the New York law firm handling his appeals pro bono but were returned unopened to the court because the attorneys representing Maples had left the firm. Maples himself was not informed of the Alabama ruling or the fact that his attorneys had left. By…

Daniel Cook is scheduled for execution on April 5 in Arizona, despite the fact that the lead prosecutor at his 1988 capital trial has said that he would not have sought the death penalty if he had known more about Cook’s traumatic background and mental illness. At trial, Cook waived his right to counsel and represented himself after learning his appointed lawyer was suffering from bipolar disorder and was drinking heavily. The judge denied Cook’s petition for a mental heath expert, and Cook…

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has seized Georgia’s foreign supply of sodium thiopental, saying it will hold the drug while it investigates whether the Department of Corrections imported the drug legally. In February, attorneys representing Georgia death row inmate Andrew DeYoung sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder alleging that Georgia had violated the federal Controlled Substances Act “by failing to register as an importer of the controlled substance” sodium thiopental.

In a recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune following Illinois’s abolition of the death penalty, author and attorney Scott Turow (pictured) outlined three major conservative reasons for opposing capital punishment: it is a failed government program, it is a waste of money, and it doesn’t fit with the idea of limited government. Turow served on former Governor George Ryan’s Commission on Capital Punishment, which found numerous problems with the state’s death penalty. In highlighting the failures…

On March 10, the execution of Johnnie Baston (pictured) in Ohio marked the first time any state carried out a death sentence with a single dose of the barbituate pentobarbital. The use of pentobarbital, more commonly employed in euthanizing animals, raised concerns among some death penalty experts. Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno warned, “Ohio is gambling blindly in its rush to execute. There is no reason why Ohio cannot take the time to devise a constitutionally acceptable…