Publications & Testimony

Renowned Alabama attor­ney Bryan Stevenson was award­ed the 2009 Gruber Justice Prize for his ded­i­cat­ed work rep­re­sent­ing death row inmates, indi­gent defen­dants and juve­niles. Stevenson said the $250,000 prize would be direct­ed to the Equal Justice Initiative, an orga­ni­za­tion Stevenson found­ed that is best known for rep­re­sent­ing death row inmates. The Gruber Foundation not­ed that Stevenson and his staff had been respon­si­ble for​“for…

Eighty-eight per­cent of the country’s top crim­i­nol­o­gists do not believe the death penal­ty acts as a deter­rent to homi­cide, accord­ing to a new study pub­lished on June 16 in the Northwestern University School of Law’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. The study was authored by Professor Michael Radelet, Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, and grad­u­ate stu­dent Traci Lacock. Their article, ​“Do Executions Lower Homicide…

The rel­a­tives of a six-year-old child who was mur­dered in Georgia expressed their wish­es that the death penal­ty not be sought against his killer and said they want­ed​“peo­ple to know the true sto­ry” of what hap­pened to the child. ​“Me and the father and the moth­er, none of us want the death sen­tence,” said Thomas Murphy, the boy’s uncle.​“We want him to live know­ing what he [has] done. We want him to live every day of his life know­ing what he [has] done…

Former California Attorney General and Los Angeles District Attorney John Van de Kamp recent­ly wrote an op-ed call­ing for an end to the state’s death penal­ty in light of the eco­nom­ic cri­sis.​“With California fac­ing its most severe fis­cal cri­sis in recent mem­o­ry — with dra­con­ian cuts about to be imposed from Sacramento that will affect every res­i­dent of the state — it would be crazy not to con­sid­er the fact that it will add…

The Illinois Cook County Public Defender’s Office has run out of funds to cov­er the expens­es need­ed to pro­vide ade­quate death penal­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Cook County Public Defender Abishi Cunningham Jr. said the short­fall orig­i­nat­ed from for­mer-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s veto of a bill that would have increased the pub­lic defend­er bud­get from $1.75 mil­lion to $2.25 mil­lion. Without that $500,000, Cunningham said they have run out of mon­ey to pay for expert…

U.N. Special Investigator Philip Alston has sub­mit­ted a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva crit­i­ciz­ing the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the U.S. Alston calls for the U.S. to enact more strin­gent safe­guards to pro­tect the inno­cent, say­ing the cur­rent appli­ca­tion some­times leads to mis­car­riages of justice. ​“It is wide­ly acknowl­edged that inno­cent peo­ple have most like­ly been exe­cut­ed in the U.S,” Alston said.

The first exe­cu­tion under Ohio​’s new lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure was con­duct­ed on June 3. Questions about the effec­tive­ness of the first of the three drugs used, as well as recent botched exe­cu­tions, have brought Ohio’s pro­ce­dures under scruti­ny. The new pro­ce­dures include a pro­ce­dure for the war­den to pinch the inmate to make sure the first drug works before admin­is­ter­ing the sec­ond, which has been described as excru­ti­at­ing­ly painful .​“The…

The lat­est edi­tion of Lapham’s Quarterly fea­tures essays from a wide vari­ety of authors reflect­ing on crime and pun­ish­ment. At least one of the arti­cles, by Christopher Hitchens, focus­es on the death penal­ty. In​“Staking a Life,” Hitchens draws on his back­ground in reli­gion, moral­i­ty, and gov­ern­ment to explore why the United States con­tin­ues to uti­lize cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment while many of our allies have aban­doned it.​“I have heard a number of…

Alabama has adopt­ed new leg­is­la­tion that allows some inmates to obtain DNA test­ing on old evi­dence. However, crit­ics have point­ed out impor­tant lim­i­ta­tions in the new law. The new pro­ce­dure is lim­it­ed to inmates who were con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal crimes, includ­ing those on death row. The Department of Forensic Sciences request­ed this lim­i­ta­tion because they believed they did not have the resources to han­dle a larg­er class of cas­es. Even those con­vict­ed of a capital…

On June 1, in the case of Bobby v. Bies, the U.S. Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly ruled that Michael Bies had to bring his claim of men­tal retar­da­tion before a sep­a­rate state hear­ing, there­by revers­ing the low­er fed­er­al courts that held such a hear­ing would con­sti­tute dou­ble jeop­ardy. The Court held that Ohio could con­test Bies’ asser­tion that he is men­tal­ly retard­ed and that this does not sub­ject Bies to dou­ble jeop­ardy, despite…