Publications & Testimony

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. Sister Helen Prejean, author…

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 and had been…

On August 5, the North Carolina sen­ate passed a bill allow­ing pre-tri­al defen­dants and death-row inmates to chal­lenge the death penal­ty process through the use of sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies. The Racial Justice Act allows a defen­dant fac­ing a cap­i­tal tri­al or an inmate sen­tenced to death to use evi­dence show­ing a pat­tern of racial dis­par­i­ty as a way of chal­leng­ing racial injus­tice in the death penal­ty. Prosecutors would then have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rebut the claim…

The num­ber of mur­ders in New Jersey declined 24% in the first six months of 2009 com­pared to the same peri­od last year. Murders declined in 2008, the year after the state abol­ished the death penal­ty, mark­ing the first time since 1999 that New Jersey has seen a drop in mur­ders for two con­sec­u­tive years. Murders dropped 11% in 2007, the year fol­low­ing a state-imposed mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions, which was insti­tut­ed in 2006. Governor Jon Corzine, who signed the…

The President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki, announced on August 3 that he is com­mut­ing the death sen­tences of every­one on the coun­try’s death row to life impris­on­ment. The President cit­ed the wait to face exe­cu­tion of the more than 4,000 death row inmates as ​“undue men­tal anguish and suf­fer­ing.” No one has been exe­cut­ed in Kenya for 22 years. The President said he was fol­low­ing the advice of a con­sti­tu­tion­al com­mit­tee. Mr. Kibaki has direct­ed gov­ern­ment officials to…

In July 2009 the Sentencing Project (a nation­al non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion engaged in research and advo­ca­cy on crim­i­nal jus­tice pol­i­cy issues) released the study, NO EXIT: THE EXPANDING USE OF LIFE SENTENCES IN AMERICA, authored by Ashley Nellis and Ryan S. King. This report mea­sures the increase in the impo­si­tion of life sen­tences as they relate to inca­pac­i­ta­tion and pub­lic safe­ty, fis­cal costs, goals of pun­ish­ment, and the appro­pri­ate­ness of life sentences for…

In 1984, Juan Melendez was sent to Florida’s death row for the mur­der of Delbert Baker even though no phys­i­cal evi­dence linked him to the crime. In 2002, he was released with all charges vacat­ed after it was found that pros­e­cu­tors had with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence in the case. He became the 99^th per­son exon­er­at­ed in the United States since 1976, and the 20^th from Florida. As of today, 135 peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed. Juan Melendez — 6446…