Publications & Testimony

A for­mer Illinois death row inmate, Nathson Fields, was acquit­ted on April 8 of a dou­ble homi­cide for which he spent eleven and a half years on death row.​“I feel like my prayers have been answered,” said Fields after the judge issued the not guilty ver­dict in the retri­al. In Field’s orig­i­nal tri­al, the judge took a $10,000 bribe, but then returned the mon­ey when he dis­cov­ered he was under fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion. Fields and a co-defendant…

Ecuador is demand­ing the return of one of their cit­i­zens from Florida’s death row because they main­tain he was tak­en from Ecuador ille­gal­ly. The inmate, Nelson Serrano Saenz, is a dual cit­i­zen of the U.S. and Ecuador. Ecuador says he should have nev­er been tak­en from their coun­try by Florida offi­cials, call­ing the arrest a​“kid­nap­ping” and accus­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment of phys­i­cal mal­treat­ment of Serrano as well.

According to the lat­est edi­tion of Death Row U.S.A. pub­lished by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), the size of death row decreased slight­ly as of July 1, 2008 com­pared to Jan. 1. After increas­ing steadi­ly for about 25 years, the death row pop­u­la­tion start­ed decreas­ing in 2000. The cur­rent total of defen­dants on state and fed­er­al death rows is 3,307, of whom 45% are white, 41.6% are black, and 11% are Latino/​Latina. Over 98%…

A study by attor­ney Marcia Wilson was recent­ly pub­lished in the New Mexico Law Review:​“The Application of the Death Penalty in New Mexico, July 1979 through December 2007: An Empirical Analysis.” Wilson’s research reveals new infor­ma­tion on how the death penal­ty was applied in New Mexico after its rein­state­ment. The arti­cle was pub­lished before New Mexico repealed the death penal­ty in March 2009, and served as valu­able infor­ma­tion dur­ing the legislative…

Across the state of Florida, pub­lic defend­ers and pros­e­cu­tors are fac­ing fur­loughs due to a bud­get short­fall, poten­tial­ly leav­ing the crim­i­nal court sys­tem at a stand­still dur­ing some of the next three months.​“As we have hung to the cliff by our fin­ger­nails, this 15 per­cent [bud­get] cut is the boot stomp­ing our hands,” the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association wrote to Gov. Charlie Crist recent­ly. Public defend­ers say they will not be able to…

A ground­break­ing study by Brandon Garrett and Peter Neufeld pub­lished in the Virginia Law Review explores erro­neous sci­en­tif­ic tes­ti­mo­ny by pros­e­cu­tion experts in the tri­als of defen­dants who were lat­er exon­er­at­ed through DNA test­ing. The research, ​“Invalid Forensic Science Testimony and Wrongful Convictions,” explored sero­log­i­cal analy­sis and micro­scop­ic hair com­par­i­son, bite mark evi­dence, shoe prints, soil, fiber, fingerprint comparisons,…

On April 1, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Harbison v. Bell that fed­er­al­ly appoint­ed coun­sel can rep­re­sent indi­gent cap­i­tal clients in state clemen­cy pro­ce­dures. The case, which was argued before the Supreme Court in January 2009, asked whether a fed­er­al law that pro­vides lawyers to indi­gent state death row inmates for parts of their appeal guar­an­tees them the con­tin­u­a­tion of that rep­re­sen­ta­tion through the state clemency…

According to a review by the Houston Chronicle, Texas attor­neys who failed to meet dead­lines in fil­ing their clients’ appeals for­feit­ed the final oppor­tu­ni­ty to appeal for at least 9 men, 6 of whom have already been exe­cut­ed. The fail­ures includ­ed lawyers who mis­cal­cu­lat­ed or mis­un­der­stood the dead­lines, com­put­er fail­ures, and human error. Many were dis­missed sim­ply because they were filed after busi­ness hours on the day of the deadline.

A new report released by The Justice Project,​“Convicting the Innocent: Texas Justice Derailed,” ana­lyzes the cas­es of 39 inno­cent Texans who col­lec­tive­ly spent more than 500 years in prison for crimes they did not com­mit. The study focus­es on these non-cap­i­­tal crimes as it rec­om­mends reforms Texas should imple­ment to improve the qual­i­ty of evi­dence used and reduce the risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. Eyewitness misiden­ti­fi­ca­tion was the lead­ing cause of…

UPDATE: JOSE BRISENO RECEIVED A STAY OF EXECUTION ON APRIL 2. Texas death row inmate Jose Briseno is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on April 7. However, a stream of let­ters and sup­port, includ­ing some from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice staff, fel­low pris­on­ers, and a net­work of peo­ple out­side of prison has been sent to the Texas Board of Pardon and Paroles ask­ing that his sen­tence be com­mut­ed to life. According to the clemency petition…