Publications & Testimony

Testimony of Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center, before the Commission to Study the Death Penalty in New Hampshire on costs of the death penal­ty and relat­ed issues. (December…

Justices John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas dis­agreed over whether to grant a stay of exe­cu­tion to Cecil Johnson, Jr., who was was con­vict­ed of mur­der in a 1980 shoot­ing at a con­ve­nience store in Tennessee. Johnson had been on death row for near­ly three decades. Justice Stevens said this lengthy time between his sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion could amount to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment: “[T]he delay itself sub­jects death row…

Attorneys for Bobby Wayne Woods are seek­ing to delay his December 3 exe­cu­tion because of his tri­al lawyer’s incom­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the fact that Woods is men­tal­ly retard­ed. Woods’ cur­rent lawyer is ask­ing the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for a 60-day reprieve so that it can assess Woods’ men­tal com­pe­ten­cy for exe­cu­tion. Attorney Maurie Levin, an adjunct law pro­fes­sor at the University of Texas, said that the prior lawyer…

On November 30, the United States Supreme Court over­turned the death sen­tence of George Porter, a Korean War vet­er­an from Florida who had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1988. The Court stat­ed that Porter’s tri­al lawyer failed to inves­ti­gate and present ample mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence, includ­ing the fact that Porter’s bat­tle ser­vice in the war left him severe­ly trau­ma­tized. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit had held that such…

Linda Greenhouse,​“Selective Empathy,” The New York Times, December 3, 2009; Porter v. McCollum, No. 08 – 10537 (U.S. Nov. 30, 2009) (per curi­am); Bobby v. Van Hook, No. 09 – 144 (U.S. Nov. 9, 2009 (per curiam)Andrew Cohen,​“Not the end of the affair,” CBS News, May 3, 2009Bob Herbert,​“Who Gets the Death Penalty?,”…

Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, has writ­ten an eval­u­a­tion of Florida​’s death penal­ty to be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing edi­tion of the Elon University Law Review. The eval­u­a­tion is based on a study by an assess­ment team spon­sored by the American Bar Association. Florida is one of the lead­ing states in sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death, but it also has the most death row exonerations…

On November 25, the Supreme Court of Kentucky ruled that changes to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col were not prop­er­ly adopt­ed and must be sub­mit­ted for pub­lic review and approval before exe­cu­tions can take place. According to the opin­ion, “[T]his Court can­not ignore the pub­li­ca­tion and pub­lic hear­ing require­ments set forth in Kentucky statutes. Thus, the Department must pro­ceed … to adopt as an admin­is­tra­tive reg­u­la­tion all por­tions of the…

On November 23, Kentucky Public Advocate Ed Monahan and Louisville Metro Chief Public Defender Dan Goyette called on the gov­er­nor and the state’s Attorney General to stay all exe­cu­tions until an assess­ment team formed by the American Bar Association can objec­tive­ly review the state’s death penal­ty. Monahan and Goyette wrote let­ters ask­ing Attorney General Jack Conway not to request any fur­ther execution warrants…

James Tyrone Woodson’s death sen­tence was over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 because the jury had not been allowed to con­sid­er any mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in his life or about his periph­er­al role in the crime. The Court not only reject­ed Woodson’s death sen­tence, but held that a manda­to­ry death penal­ty sys­tem was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Woodson had been con­vict­ed in 1974 of first-degree mur­der, which was auto­mat­i­cal­ly pun­ish­able by the death…

The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates is a book by John Temple about the coura­geous work of a death penal­ty defense attor­ney in the south. Ken Rose is an attor­ney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in North Carolina. He has han­dled many cap­i­tal cas­es, but the focus of this book is his defense of Bo Jones, a men­tal­ly hand­i­capped farm­hand con­vict­ed of a murder that…