Publications & Testimony

On January 18, 2011, seven religious leaders from Texas will hold a groundbreaking panel discussion in Houston addressing faith-based views on the death penalty. The panel will be moderated by Sister Helen Prejean (pictured), author of Dead Man Walking, and Vicki Schieber of Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights. The free presentation will include leaders from a diversity of faiths and denominations, including: Cardinal Daniel Dinardo of the Roman Catholic Church; Rev. Daniel Malendez…

On December 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit rejected a claim by Oklahoma death row inmate Jeffrey Matthews that the use of the drug pentobarbital could result in a cruel and unusual punishment. The Court unanimously concluded that the amount of pentobarbital authorities plan to use, as the first in a three-drug procedure, would likely be lethal by itself. The decision also allows the execution of John David Duty, scheduled for December 16, to proceed. Duty would be the first…

According to a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) entitled, “Slamming the Courthouse Doors: Denial of Access to Justice and Remedy in America,” many states severely restrict access to justice for capital defendants and limit the availability of remedies to correct errors. The problem of inadequate counsel continues to pervade death penalty systems across the country: “Few states provide adequate funds to compensate lawyers for their work or to investigate cases properly. In…

A recent op-ed by Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof (pictured) of the New York Times focuses on the possible innocence of Kevin Cooper, a black defendant on California’s death row. Kristof writes, “This case is a travesty. It underscores the central pitfall of capital punishment: no system is fail-safe. How can we be about to execute a man when even some of America’s leading judges believe he has been framed?” Cooper faces execution for a 1983 quadruple-murder of a white family.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Bruce Webster, an inmate on the federal death row with evidence that he is intellectually disabed. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the execution of a person with intellectual disabilities (mental retardation) would be unconstitutional. Webster’s evidence indicates that three federal doctors determined he had an intellectual disability when he applied for disability benefits in 1993, a year before he committed…

A shortage of qualified criminal defense lawyers in California has caused major delays in the state’s capital punishment system. Nearly half of those sentenced to death in California are waiting for the state to appoint them a post-conviction attorney. Death row inmates wait an average of 10 – 12 years. The long delay is attributed to the lack of experienced lawyers to take on this part of the appeals process. The California Supreme Court requires that lawyers have experience in trial and…

A recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, highlighs flaws in Texas’s death penalty system that led to the execution of Claude Jones (pictured). Then-governor George Bush rejected Jones’s application for a reprieve. Bush was not informed that the reprieve would allow time for DNA tests to be performed on a strand of hair that was found at the crime scene. This hair had been attributed to Jones at his trial and was the only piece of evidence…