Publications & Testimony

The Tennessee Law Review recent­ly pub­lished a com­pi­la­tion of arti­cles and essays from its col­lo­qui­um, ​“The Past, Present, and Future of the Death Penalty,” held in February 2009. Contributors focused on issues that have influ­enced cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment through­out the course of his­to­ry. An arti­cle by Hugo Adam Bedau, a promi­nent death penal­ty schol­ar, address­es the issues of inno­cence and racial bias in the appli­ca­tion of the death…

A recent opin­ion piece by the Editorial Director of the Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi points to the high costs of the death penal­ty as a way in which arbi­trari­ness enters into the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: ​“When is a crime a crime deserv­ing of death?,” David Hampton asks. ​“When the coun­ty can afford it, of course.” The paper sup­ports the death penal­ty but the Editorial Director offered the exam­ple of Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith, who…

The costs of the death penal­ty have been a bur­den on var­i­ous coun­ties in Mississippi for many years. Quitman County was forced to raise tax­es for three years and bor­rowed $150,000 to pro­vide legal coun­sel to Robert Simon and Anthony Carr, who were sen­tenced to death for mur­ders com­mit­ted in 1990. A death-penal­ty case ​“is almost like light­ning strik­ing,” coun­ty admin­is­tra­tor Butch Scipper told The Wall Street Journal in 2002. ​“It is…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in America Magazine enti­tled The Price of Death reviewed the grow­ing prob­lems with the death penal­ty and stat­ed, ​“It is time for the nation to con­clude once and for all that in our civ­i­lized soci­ety there is no place for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” The nation­al Catholic week­ly cit­ed the recent­ly botched exe­cu­tion in Ohio, racial dis­par­i­ties, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent as rea­sons why pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has declined.

On October 28, 2009, Travis County, Texas, pros­e­cu­tors moved to dis­miss all charges against Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, who had been con­vict­ed of the mur­der of four teens in an Austin yogurt shop in 1991. (Springsteen was con­vict­ed in 2001; Scott in 2002.) Springsteen had been sen­tenced to death and Scott was sen­tenced to life in prison. The con­vic­tions of both men were over­turned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals because they had not been…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al from the Aurora Sentinel in Colorado com­ment­ed on the botched exe­cu­tion of Romell Broom. The paper enti­tled its posi­tion as ​“Time for America to move past cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” In addi­tion to cit­ing the prob­lems with lethal injec­tion, the paper not­ed the risk of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent and the U.S.‘s increas­ing iso­la­tion on the death penal­ty in the world. The edi­to­r­i­al con­tin­ut­ed, ​“Even for those who believe that such heinous…