Publications & Testimony

On January 20, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the death sen­tence for Holly Wood for the 1993 shoot­ing of his for­mer girl­friend in Alabama, despite the fact that the attor­ney work­ing on the penal­ty phase of the case failed to inves­ti­gate or tell the jury about Wood’s bor­der­line men­tal retar­da­tion. A fed­er­al District Court had over­turned his death sen­tence because of the inad­e­quate per­for­mance of the…

On January 19, the U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed cer­tio­rari and reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Wellons v. Hall, order­ing the low­er court to re-exam­­ine the appeal of Marcus Wellons, who received the death penal­ty for a 1989 rape and mur­der in Georgia. The Court’s per curi­am opin­ion described​“unusu­al events going on behind the scenes” at Wellons’ tri­al, includ­ing con­tacts outside the…

On January 14, and almost 30 years after the crime, the Florida Supreme Court crit­i­cized the state for​“law­less con­duct” and vacat­ed the death sen­tence of Paul Beasley Johnson because​“the record here is so rife with evi­dence of pre­vi­ous­ly undis­closed pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct that we have no choice but to grant relief.” Because of pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment and the noto­ri­ety of the crime, Governor Charlie Crist signed…

On January 14, President Tsakhia Elbegdorj called for a mora­to­ri­um on all exe­cu­tions in Mongolia. President Elbegdorj told the Mongolian par­lia­ment,​“The major­i­ty of the world’s coun­tries have cho­sen to abol­ish the death penal­ty. We should fol­low this path.” He vowed to par­don those on death row and sug­gest­ed com­mut­ing the death sen­tences to a 30-year prison term. Amnesty International esti­mat­ed that at least 5 peo­ple were executed…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Dallas Morning News recalled that the paper had reversed its posi­tion in sup­port of the death penal­ty in April 2007. Since then, the edi­to­r­i­al not­ed, Texas has account­ed for an even larg­er per­cent­age of the coun­try’s exe­cu­tions, but also that there are signs the use of the death penal­ty is declin­ing even in Texas. The paper high­light­ed the 55 exon­er­a­tions from death row in this decade as a 25% increase from last…

California recent­ly released its revised lethal injec­tion guide­lines, fol­low­ing a June pub­lic hear­ing on the pro­to­col. The 25-page doc­u­ment indi­cates small revi­sions, out­lin­ing such items as to when the cur­tains remain open in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber to def­i­n­i­tions of the term​“chap­lain” and​“lethal injec­tion room.” Natasha Minsker, the Death Penalty Policy Director of the ACLU of Northern California called the revisions…

The Bureau of Justice Statistics released the 2008 ver­sion of its annu­al report on the death penal­ty in the U.S. in December 2009. Information drawn from the…

On January 12, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Smith v. Spisak. After Frank Spisak was sen­tenced to death in Ohio and his ini­tial appeals were denied, he filed a habeas cor­pus peti­tion claim­ing that: 1) the jury instruc­tions and ver­dict forms used at his tri­al uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required the jury to be unan­i­mous in choos­ing any mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors; and 2) his attor­ney’s closing argument…

Louisiana has seen a steep decline in exe­cu­tions com­pared to pre­vi­ous decades, with only three exe­cu­tions in the last ten years. This is in stark con­trast to the eight men who were elec­tro­cut­ed with­in the span of 11 weeks in 1987, and it fol­lows a nation­wide trend of declin­ing exe­cu­tions and imposition of…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina cit­ed the American Law Institute​’s deci­sion in 2009 to sep­a­rate itself from the death penal­ty sys­tem as anoth­er rea­son for the state to abol­ish the prac­tice. The ALI, whose mod­el death penat­ly stan­dards were instru­men­tal in the U.S. Supreme Court​’s deci­sion to allow the rein­state­ment of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1976, has recent­ly disavowed its…