Publications & Testimony

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…

Former Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia has called for a full court hear­ing on the new evi­dence offered by death row inmate Troy Davis regard­ing his pos­si­ble inno­cence. Davis’s attor­neys have sub­mit­ted a peti­tion to the U.S. Supreme Court request­ing such a hear­ing. Barr not­ed that part of the basis the low­er courts have used in refus­ing to hold a hear­ing is the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, a law that he helped write. Barr, who also served as a U.S. Attorney…

The Ride: A Shocking Murder and a Bereaved Father’s Journey from Rage to Redemption is a new book by Brian MacQuarrie that explores a par­en­t’s grief and sub­se­quent trans­for­ma­tion through the sto­ry of Robert Curley in Massachusetts. Curley’s 10-year-old son, Jeffrey, was a vic­tim of abduc­tion and mur­der in 1997. The mur­der shocked and out­raged the com­mu­ni­ty of East Cambridge out­side of Boston. MacQuarrie explores the father’s evo­lu­tion​“from grief to anger…

On May 28, Nebraska​’s Governor Dave Heineman signed a bill chang­ing the state’s method of exe­cu­tion from elec­tro­cu­tion to lethal injec­tion. Nebraska had been with­out a legal method of exe­cu­tion since February 2008 when the state’s Supreme Court found the elec­tric chair uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Before exe­cu­tions in the state can resume, Nebraska still needs to devel­op pro­ce­dures for lethal injec­tions and the new law will be test­ed in court. Nebraska was the…

Florida Governor Charlie Crist recent­ly chose two death row inmates for exe­cu­tion from among many eli­gi­ble pris­on­ers on the state’s death row, but no rea­sons were giv­en for his choice. He joins a long line of Florida gov­er­nors who made the deci­sion of who lives and who dies with­out expla­na­tion of their selec­tion method.​“I don’t know how they decide,” said John Marek’s lawyer, Marty McClain, a vet­er­an death-row attor­ney who has defended…

California is fac­ing an unprece­dent­ed bud­get deficit and vot­ers recent­ly reject­ed a series of tax reforms. To meet the cri­sis, Gov. Schwarzenegger has pro­posed sell­ing state owned prop­er­ty, includ­ing San Quentin State Prison, to rem­e­dy the $21.3 bil­lion deficit. Natasha Minsker of the Northern California ACLU, writ­ing in the Daily Kos, has pro­posed that California elim­i­nate or sus­pend the death penal­ty as a way of sav­ing a large amount of mon­ey. According to her…