Publications & Testimony

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…

Linda Greenhouse, for­mer Supreme Court writer for the New York Times, recent­ly wrote about the rever­sal of a death sen­tence by the U. S. Supreme Court. The Court over­turned George Porter Jr.​‘s death sen­tence because of the inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion he received and the pow­er­ful mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in Mr. Porter’s life that his attor­ney failed to inves­ti­gate and present to the jury con­sid­er­ing his clien­t’s life. The Court’s…

Kenneth Biros, who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Ohio on December 8, request­ed an emer­gency stay of exe­cu­tion in U.S. District Court, argu­ing that Ohio is mov­ing too fast to use its new, one-drug lethal injec­tion process. Last month, Ohio became the first state to adopt a one-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col when its three-drug method came under scruti­ny fol­low­ing the botched exe­cu­tion attempt on death row inmate…

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…