Publications & Testimony

In an edi­to­r­i­al on September 28 in the New York Times, the paper called the death penal­ty​“an eco­nom­ic drain on gov­ern­ments with already bad­ly deplet­ed bud­gets.” Citing fig­ures from the Death Penalty Information Center, the Times not­ed that​“States waste mil­lions of dol­lars on win­ning death penal­ty ver­dicts, which require an expen­sive sec­ond tri­al, new wit­ness­es and long jury selec­tions. Death rows require extra…

Japan, the only oth­er indus­tri­al­ized democ­ra­cy apart from the United States that still prac­tices the death penal­ty, may see a halt to exe­cu­tions with the recent appoint­ment of Keiko Chiba as jus­tice min­is­ter. Chiba, a lawyer and active death penal­ty abo­li­tion­ist for the past 20 years, would have to pro­vide the final sig­na­ture for an…

John Diaz, the edi­to­r­i­al page edi­tor of the San Francisco Chronicle, recent­ly ques­tioned the wis­dom of spend­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on the death penal­ty in California. Diaz point­ed to the enor­mous expense of main­tain­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state:​“Today, California has near­ly 700 inmates on death row, more than any oth­er state, with their cas­es in vary­ing lev­els of appeal. The hous­ing of an inmate on…

In March of this year, New Mexico repealed the death penal­ty, becom­ing the fif­teenth state to abol­ish the prac­tice. The law, how­ev­er, is not retroac­tive, and does not affect two inmates cur­rent­ly on death row as well as any defen­dant sen­tenced to death for crimes com­mit­ted before the law was to take effect in July 2009. One of the leg­is­la­tors who vot­ed to end the death penal­ty, part­ly because of its high costs, was Republican gubernatorial candidate…

On September 22, the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Crime and Homeland Security of the Judiciary Committee held hear­ings on the re-autho­riza­­­tion of the Inno­cence Protection Act. Among those mak­ing pre­sen­ta­tions were not­ed defense attor­neys Stephen Bright (pic­tured), President of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, and Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project in New York. Mr. Bright empha­sized that the best…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled on September 16 that death row inmate Charles Hood is not enti­tled to a new tri­al despite the fact that the judge and the pros­e­cu­tor from his tri­al had been hav­ing an affair. In a 6‑to‑3 deci­sion, the court held that Hood should have raised the argu­ment that the affair taint­ed his tri­al in ear­li­er appeals of his 1990 mur­der con­vic­tion. The court’s decision reverses…

The par­tial time­line below of the attempt­ed exe­cu­tion of Romell Broom in Ohio on Sept. 15 was com­piled by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sept. 17, 2009; reporter Peter Krouse. The entire time­line can found by clicking…

More infor­ma­tion is being report­ed about the botched exe­cu­­tion-attempt of Romell Broom yes­ter­day (Sept. 15) in Ohio. According to the Associated Press, the cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers encoun­tered so much dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing a suit­able vein for the lethal injec­tion that, after an hour, Broom attempt­ed to assist them by mov­ing on his side, slid­ing the rub­ber tub­ing up and down his arm, and flex­ing his fin­gers. A vein was found, but…

Romell Broom (pic­tured) was to be exe­cut­ed at 10 AM on Tuesday, September 15, in Ohio. The exe­cu­tion was delayed as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit con­sid­ered grant­i­ng him a hear­ing. When that tem­po­rary stay was lift­ed, the exe­cu­tion process began again with a search­ing for a suit­able vein in Broom’s arm to insert an IV and to inject the lethal chem­i­cals. However, after two hours of fruit­less endeav­or, the correctional…

In 2004 Cameron Todd Willingham was exe­cut­ed in Texas for mur­der­ing his chil­dren by arson. Since then, numer­ous foren­sic fire experts have con­clud­ed that the evi­dence of arson pre­sent­ed at Willingham’s tri­al could not sup­port the con­clu­sion that he caused the fire. That same year, Ernest Willis was freed from death row in Texas after the pros­e­cu­tion con­clud­ed that his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for arson were…