Publications & Testimony

Renowned researchers David Baldus, Professor of Law at the University of Iowa, and George Woodworth, a fel­low of the American Statistical Association, recent­ly wrote about the ongo­ing prob­lem of racial dis­par­i­ties in cap­i­tal cas­es. Professors Baldus and Woodworth were respon­si­ble for the acclaimed study on race and the death penal­ty in Georgia that was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987 in McCleskey v. Kemp. In response 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…

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…

On July 28, Brian Dugan plead­ed guilty to the rape and mur­der of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in Illinois 25 years ago. Two oth­er men, Rolando Cruz, (pic­tured) and Alejandro Hernandez, were orig­i­nal­ly charged with the mur­der and were sen­tenced to death. They were even­tu­al­ly exon­er­at­ed in 1995 after numer­ous tri­als. At the plead­ing, DuPage County State’s Attorney Joseph Birkett acknowl­edged that there had nev­er been any physical evidence…

A recent study by Professor Michael Radelet and Traci Lacock of the University of Colorado found that 88% of the nation’s lead­ing crim­i­nol­o­gists do not believe the death penal­ty is an effec­tive deter­rent to crime. The study, Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists, pub­lished in the Journal of Criminal Law and Crimonology, con­clud­ed,​“There is over­whelm­ing con­sen­sus among America’s top crim­i­nol­o­gists that the empirical…

Following recent­ly passed leg­is­la­tion, Texas will open an office with nine attor­neys to man­age post-con­vic­­tion appeals in death penal­ty cas­es. In the past, appoint­ed attor­neys some­times missed fil­ing dead­lines or filed inad­e­quate briefs, there­by jeop­ar­diz­ing their clients’ cas­es. The Office of Capital Writs will be fund­ed by redi­rect­ing mon­ey already in the state bud­get: $500,000 for­mer­ly used to pay pri­vate attorneys for…

In Pennsylvania, the state goes through the expen­sive and time-con­­sum­ing process of try­ing many death penal­ty cas­es and fight­ing appeals, but almost all cas­es end with a life sen­tence. According to a recent Associated Press study of what hap­pens in cap­i­tal cas­es in the state, 124 death sen­tences have been over­turned and resen­tenced. When these cas­es went through the jus­tice sys­tem a sec­ond time with the orig­i­nal errors cor­rect­ed, 95% (118)…

There nev­er was any ques­tion that Brian Nichols was guilty of the cour­t­house shoot­ing of a judge and three oth­er vic­tims in 2005. He had offered to plead guilty if the death penal­ty was not pur­sued, but the state insist­ed on a full death penal­ty tri­al that end­ed up being the most expen­sive cap­i­tal case in Georgia’s his­to­ry. In 2008, the case con­clud­ed with Nichols being sen­tenced to life with­out parole. Recently, the defense costs were revealed to be more than $3…

In response to an amend­ment to the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act that would add the death penal­ty as a pun­ish­ment for cer­tain offens­es under the Act, Senator Edward Kennedy (MA) entered a state­ment into the Congressional Record high­light­ing some of the risks of the death penal­ty. An excerpt of his statement…

The Innocence Project has released a new report point­ing to the prob­lems with eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tions in crim­i­nal cas­es and offer­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for mak­ing the sys­tem more reli­able. The report,​“Reevaluating Lineups: Why Witnesses Make Mistakes and How to Reduce the Chance of a Misidentification,” states that over 175 peo­ple (includ­ing some who were sen­tenced to death) have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed based, in part, on…