Publications & Testimony

Anthony Caravello was con­vict­ed of rape and mur­der for a crime he alleged­ly com­mit­ted in 1983 at age 15 in Florida. The pros­e­cu­tion sought the death penal­ty. Now DNA evi­dence from the crime scene points to anoth­er indi­vid­ual and may result in his exon­er­a­tion. The state is not con­test­ing his release. Caravello has an IQ of 67 and was con­vict­ed large­ly on the basis of his own state­ments, which he says were obtained from him after…

On September 9, The Bob Edwards Show on Sirius XM Radio inter­viewed Stephen Bright and Nina Morrison regard­ing the case of Troy Anthony Davis. Edwards is the award-win­n­ing for­mer host of National Public Radio’s​“Morning Edition.” The show offered this intro­duc­tion:​“Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court did some­thing it hadn’t done in 50 years – it ordered a stay of exe­cu­tion and court hear­ing for an inmate to attempt to prove his inno­cence. Since 1991, Troy Davis has been…

A recent arti­cle in the Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina cap­tures the poignant sto­ry of one man’s life on death row. James Floyd Davis is a Vietnam vet­er­an who lashed out with a burst of vio­lence four­teen years ago, killing three peo­ple includ­ing his boss who had fired him a few days before. He suf­fers from men­tal ill­ness and post-trau­­mat­ic stress dis­or­der. Through the inter­ven­tion of a ther­a­pist who also served in Vietnam, it was learned…

Acclaimed artist Robert Priseman has assem­bled some of his draw­ings of exe­cu­tion cham­bers with essays on the death penal­ty into a new book entitled ​“No Human Way to Kill.” The essays include the sto­ry of a moth­er whose daugh­ter was mur­dered, a death row inmate’s diary, and an inter­view with Jim Willett, for­mer war­den of the prison where Texas exe­cu­tions are held. Death penal­ty attor­ney Clive Stafford Smith writes in review,​“The etch­ings and accounts…

Former death row inmate Michael Toney was freed from prison in Texas on September 2 after the state’s Attorney General asked that his death sen­tence and crim­i­nal charges be dis­missed. Toney was sen­tenced to death for a fatal bomb­ing in 1985 that occurred at a trail­er park in Lake Worth. He has always main­tained his inno­cence, and there was no phys­i­cal evi­dence lead­ing to his con­vic­tion. His con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were overturned by…

Recent sci­en­tif­ic reports indi­cat­ing that Texas like­ly exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man have spurred wide cov­er­age and com­men­tary. Cameron Todd Willingham was exe­cut­ed in 2004 for the arson mur­der of his three chil­dren. Fire experts now say the blaze was like­ly an acci­dent. Excerpts…

Most Californians would sup­port a sen­tence of life with­out parole for those con­vict­ed of mur­der rather than the death penal­ty accord­ing to a new opin­ion poll released on September 1. If the life sen­tence was com­bined with a require­ment that the inmate work to make resti­tu­tion to the fam­i­ly of the vic­tim, only 26% of Californians would still opt for the death penal­ty. The poll was con­duct­ed by Prof. Craig Haney of the…

In a thor­ough and pen­e­trat­ing arti­cle pub­lished in The New Yorker on August 31, David Grann offers fur­ther evi­dence that Texas prob­a­bly exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man in 2004. Grann care­ful­ly exam­ines all the evi­dence that was used in the two-day tri­al in 1992 to con­vict Cameron Todd Willingham of mur­der by arson of his three young chil­dren. It is now well estab­lished through a series of inves­ti­ga­tions by other…

D. Grann,​“Trial by Fire: Did Texas Execute an Innocent Man?” The New Yorker, Sept. 7, 2009; Press Release, The Innocence Project, Aug. 31, 2009.W. Sessions,​“DNA Evidence and the Death Penalty,” Jurist, May 30, 2007Maurice Possley and Steve Mills. ​“Did this man die…for this man’s crime?” The Chicago Tribune. June…

Probably the most com­plete col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion on exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the United States from colo­nial times to the mod­ern era was assem­bled by Watt Espy of Headland, Alabama. Espy died on August 13, 2009 at age 76, but his files and cat­a­log of exe­cu­tions was pre­served and trans­formed over the years into a search­able data­base by friends and schol­ars who appre­ci­at­ed his work. Much of his archive is now locat­ed at the State University of New…