Publications & Testimony

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…

The Ohio Parole Board made a rare rec­om­men­da­tion of clemen­cy on July 17, vot­ing 5 – 2 that Jason Getsy​’s death sen­tence should be reduced to life with­out parole. Getsy is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on August 18 for the mur­der of Ann Serafino in 1995. A co-defen­­dant who ini­ti­at­ed and orga­nized the crime received a less­er sen­tence of 35 years to life.​“In impos­ing a death sen­tence, it is imper­a­tive that we have consistency and…

John Bellinger, who served as legal advis­er to the State Department from 2005 to 2009, has called on President Obama to assist in the review of the death penal­ty cas­es of for­eign nation­als who were denied rights under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The U.S. has rat­i­fied the Vienna Convention and the Protocol that pro­vides for res­o­lu­tion of dis­putes in the International Court of Justice in the Hague (ICJ). Mexico brought a suit to…

The risk that inno­cent peo­ple could be exe­cut­ed remains high, as illus­trat­ed by the two most recent exon­er­a­tions from death row. Ronald Kitchen was freed from prison Illinois after the state dis­missed all charges against him on July 7. He had spent 13 years on death row and a total of 21 years in prison. Governor George Ryan had com­mut­ed his sen­tence to life in 2003, along with all oth­er death row inmates. Kitchen’s orig­i­nal conviction was…

On July 15, the House of Representatives of North Carolina vot­ed 61 – 53 to pass the Racial Justice Act. A sim­i­lar bill already passed the state sen­ate, though that bill con­tained an amend­ment to bypass some objec­tions to the state’s exe­cu­tion process. The new law, if final­ly approved, would allow judges to con­sid­er whether racial bias played a role in the deci­sion to seek or impose the death penal­ty.​“This is a fair­ness bill,” said Rep. Larry Womble, the…

Jefferson Parish near New Orleans has sent 28 peo­ple to death row since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1975, many of them under the cur­rent District Attorney, Paul Connick Jr., who took office in 1997. But no one has been sen­tenced to death in that parish in the past 5 years and pros­e­cu­tors haven’t even tried a cap­i­tal case in the past 4 years, despite a num­ber of high-pro­­file mur­ders. This decrease in death sen­tenc­ing is not unique to Louisiana.​“The trend in these…