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…

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…

On November 10, the Georgia Supreme Court will hear argu­ments from attor­neys for a cap­i­tal defen­dant, Jamie Weis, and from the state con­cern­ing a three-and-a-half year delay in bring­ing his case to tri­al. For two years of that delay, the Weis defense team had no fund­ing, and for 14 months he was com­plete­ly with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion. During this entire time, the state was staffed and fund­ed to pre­pare its pros­e­cu­tion of Weis. The Court will…

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…

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…

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…

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…

The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), the world’s largest region­al secu­ri­ty orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of 56 States includ­ing the U.S., recent­ly pub­lished a 2009 Background Paper on The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area. It was pre­pared by the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and updates the 2008 back­ground paper of the same title. The 2009 paper high­lights the changes in sta­tus of the death…

The Council of the American Law Institute (ALI) recent­ly vot­ed to with­draw a sec­tion of its Model Penal Code con­cerned with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment because of the​“cur­rent intractable insti­tu­tion­al and struc­tur­al obsta­cles to ensur­ing a min­i­mal­ly ade­quate sys­tem for admin­is­ter­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” The Council based its deci­sion on a study it com­mis­sioned to look into the prac­tice of the death penal­ty since the…

The University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review recent­ly pub­lished a sym­po­sium issue of Death Penalty Stories, high­light­ing the role of the nar­ra­tive in the defense of death penal­ty cas­es. The com­pi­la­tion includes con­tri­bu­tions from lit­i­ga­tors who have used per­sua­sive nar­ra­tive in sup­port of a life sen­tence. Russell Stetler’s The Unknown Story of a Motherless Child chron­i­cles the case of Edgar H., who was con­vict­ed of killing four men…