Publications & Testimony

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals recent­ly ruled that a death row inmate who removed his only remain­ing eye and ate it ​“is clear­ly ​‘crazy,’ but he is also ​‘sane’ under Texas law,” reject­ing his appeal. Death row inmate Andre Thomas had stabbed some of his fam­i­ly mem­bers and ripped their hearts out. He then walked into the Sherman Police Department, admit­ted to the killings, and said God told him to com­mit them. Shortly after his arrest, he removed his right…

Governor Bill Richardson signed the bill abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in New Mexico on March 18. New Mexico now becomes the 15^th state to aban­don cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the 3^rd in the last 2 years, fol­low­ing recent actions in New Jersey and New York in 2007. The new law sub­sti­tutes the pun­ish­ment of life with­out parole for the death penal­ty in future cas­es. In a state­ment, Gov. Richardson cit­ed the 130 inmates freed from death row since 1973…

Retired Washington State Supreme Court Justice Robert F. Utter recent­ly wrote an opin­ion piece argu­ing that the con­tin­ued use of the death penal­ty fails to serve jus­tice, pub­lic safe­ty or the pub­lic purse — and should be aban­doned. Justice Utter resigned from the high court after 23 years in 1995 because of his con­cerns about the death penal­ty. Justice Utter wrote recent­ly in the Seattle Times, ​“My orig­i­nal rea­sons for res­ig­na­tion still apply. I then stat­ed: ​‘I…

The New Mexico Senate vot­ed on March 13 to repeal the death penal­ty and replace it with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. The vote was 24 – 18. The House of Representatives had pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed in favor of repeal. The bill will now go to New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson for his sig­na­ture. He has not announced whether he will sign the bill, but has indi­cat­ed a new open­ness to the repeal effort. Many vic­tims’ fam­i­lies mem­bers in New Mexico had supported the…

Several legal author­i­ties and pub­lic offi­cials are call­ing on Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear to sus­pend the death penal­ty pend­ing res­o­lu­tion of the state’s bud­get cri­sis. Kentucky’s pub­lic defend­er sys­tem will exhaust its cur­rent bud­get by May 21 with two months remain­ing in the fis­cal year, forc­ing it to shut down. ​“The bud­get short­fall cre­ates a like­li­hood that coun­sel will be unavail­able or unable to prop­er­ly pro­ceed, there­by jeop­ar­diz­ing pros­e­cu­tions and resulting in…

Citing the costs of seek­ing the death penal­ty, Louisiana pros­e­cu­tors are ​“cut­ting way back,” accord­ing to State Attorney General Buddy Caldwell. A for­mer dis­trict attor­ney, Caldwell com­pared try­ing a cap­i­tal case to ​“play­ing on a $100-a-roll table instead of a nick­el or dime table.” He explained that he could try a sec­ond-degree mur­der case for $15,000 to $20,000 instead of $250,000 to put a death-penal­ty defen­dant on tri­al. Caldwell said the cost of expert witnesses and…