Publications & Testimony

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…

In an article entitled “Solitary Men” in The Texas Observer, Dave Mann describes the conditions for inmates on Texas’s death row. Inmates in the Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas, spend almost their entire time alone in a 60-square-foot cell. He writes, “The cells have a small window at one end. The steel door has a narrow window and, at the bottom, a slit through which guards slide trays of food… .Little penetrates these cement boxes except sound. Prison is a loud place, and sound can cause…

An op-ed by Bob Herbert of the New York Times highlights issues raised by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens that changed his mind on the death penalty in the U.S. Herbert cites information collected by the Death Penalty Information Center and points to shoddy defense and state misconduct in the deliberate withholding of evidence as prominent abuses in the system. “Executions have been upheld in cases in which defense lawyers slept through crucial proceedings. Alcoholic…