Publications & Testimony

A state ethics tri­bunal exam­in­ing the con­duct of the pre­sid­ing judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in a death penal­ty case con­clud­ed its pro­ceed­ings on August 20. Judge Sharon Keller is fac­ing a rep­ri­mand or removal from the bench for her con­duct on the day Michael Richard was exe­cut­ed in Texas on September 25, 2007. She had left the court ear­ly that day and was at home when she received a call from an assistant at…

Dr. Allen Ault was the war­den at the max­i­mum secu­ri­ty prison in Georgia where exe­cu­tions were car­ried out. He also served as Commissioner of Corrections dur­ing a life­time career in the field. He is cur­rent­ly the Dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University. In the video accom­pa­ny­ing this note, Dean Ault dis­cuss­es the tremen­dous drain that car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions had, and con­tin­ues to have,…

In the book, A Life for a Life: The American Debate Over the Death Penalty, author Michael Dow Burkhead, a psy­chol­o­gist who has worked with crim­i­nal offend­ers for 25 years, explores the var­i­ous trends in pub­lic opin­ion that influ­ence crime pre­ven­tion efforts, cre­ate pub­lic pol­i­cy, and reform crim­i­nal law. He exam­ines eight core issues about the use of exe­cu­tions: cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, dis­crim­i­na­tion, deter­rence, due process, culpability,…

On August 17 the United States Supreme Court ordered a new evi­den­tiary hear­ing for Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, whose case has drawn world­wide atten­tion because of new evi­dence of his pos­si­ble inno­cence. For the first time in near­ly 50 years, the Court has favor­ably respond­ed to a peti­tion direct­ed to them, rather than as an appeal from oth­er courts. With only two Justices writ­ing in dis­sent, the Court ordered the lower federal…

In True Stories of False Confessions, edi­tors Rob Warden and Steven Drizin present arti­cles about some of the key accounts of false con­fes­sions in the U.S. jus­tice sys­tem writ­ten by more than forty authors, includ­ing Alex Kotlowitz and John Grisham. The cas­es are grouped into cat­e­gories such as brain­wash­ing, infer­ence, fab­ri­ca­tion, and men­tal fragili­ty. This refutes the per­cep­tion that false con­fes­sions rep­re­sent indi­vid­ual tragedies rather…

A num­ber of fed­er­al judges have recent­ly writ­ten strong dis­sents in cap­i­tal cas­es because they were con­cerned that restric­tions on appeals could lead to trag­ic mis­takes. Judge William Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, for exam­ple, began his dis­sent in the case of Kevin Cooper with the words,​“The State of California may be about to exe­cute an inno­cent man.” According to a study by the New York Times, such…

The Death Penalty Project of London recent­ly pub­lished A Penalty Without Legitimacy: The Mandatory Death Penalty In Trinidad And Tobago (2009), a col­lec­tion of papers pre­sent­ed at a con­fer­ence in Trinidad & Tobago in March 2009. The papers include a study of opin­ions of judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and coun­sel on the use of the manda­to­ry death penal­ty in Trinidad and Tobago and ways to bring its prac­tice in line with oth­er coun­tries that have retained the death penal­ty. The…

Governor Beverly Purdue of North Carolina signed the state’s Racial Justice Act into law on August 11, con­clud­ing a long peri­od of leg­isla­tive action sur­round­ing this death penal­ty statute. Gov. Purdue said in a news release,​“I have always been a sup­port­er of death penal­ty, but I have always believed it must be car­ried out fair­ly. The Racial Justice Act ensures that when North Carolina hands down our state’s harsh­est pun­ish­ment to our most…

The Crying Tree is a new nov­el by Naseem Rakha that rais­es the real-life ques­tion: Could you for­give the man who mur­dered your son? Rakha is an award-win­n­ing broad­cast jour­nal­ist whose work has been heard on NPR’s​“All Things Considered” and​“Morning Edition.” The sto­ry of her nov­el is told through the lives of a moth­er whose son was mur­dered and the super­in­ten­dent of a state pen­i­ten­tiary where the defen­dan­t’s exe­cu­tion is to take place.

On August 6, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine held a press con­fer­ence announc­ing con­di­tion­al par­dons to three of the four sailors known as the Norfolk Four. Danial Williams, Joseph Dick, Eric Williams and Derek Tic were were con­vict­ed of the 1997 rape and mur­der of Michelle Moore-Bosko. The par­doned defen­dants, Danial Williams, Dick and Tic were orig­i­nal­ly giv­en life sen­tences, while Eric Williams was sen­tenced to eight and a half years in prison…