Publications & Testimony

The United States Supreme Court is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing whether to hear the case of Troy Davis or to allow his exe­cu­tion to go for­ward. The Court stayed his exe­cu­tion on September 23, less than two hours before it was to take place. The for­mal term for agree­ing to hear a case is ​“grant­i­ng a peti­tion for cer­tio­rari.” Davis’ attor­neys sub­mit­ted such a peti­tion, rais­ing a num­ber of ques­tions on which the Court could grant a hear­ing. The first ques­tion presented…

Notable inter­na­tion­al law experts cit­ed in a recent arti­cle in the Washington Lawyer crit­i­cized the Supreme Court’s 2008 deci­sion on whether an inter­na­tion­al treaty was bind­ing on Texas in the case of death row inmate Jose Medellin. Carolyn Lamm, an attor­ney at White & Case spe­cial­iz­ing in inter­na­tion­al dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, stat­ed that “[T]he fail­ure to com­pel our state court organs to com­ply with the deci­sion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] is regrettable,…

On October 1, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Louisiana’s request for a rehear­ing of the Court’s rul­ing strik­ing down the death penal­ty for non-homi­ci­dal offens­es against indi­vid­u­als. Louisiana con­tend­ed that a recent adjust­ment to mil­i­tary law that con­tin­ued to allow the death penal­ty for child rape should have been tak­en into account by the Court, result­ing in a dif­fer­ent opin­ion. The Court slight­ly mod­i­fied both the major­i­ty and dis­sent­ing opin­ions to include ref­er­ence to the military…

Leading attor­ney, law pro­fes­sor, and advo­cate Anthony Amsterdam is being hon­ored by the Southern Center for Human Rights with the Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award in Washington, DC on October 2. Professor Amsterdam con­ducts the Capital Defender Clinic at New York University Law School and is rec­og­nized for his four decades of promi­nent work in cas­es rang­ing from death penal­ty defense to claims of free speech and the press, pri­va­cy, and equal­i­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty for racial minorities…

The final Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment hear­ing was held on September 23 and among those tes­ti­fy­ing were a for­mer U.S. Senator, a New Jersey Police Chief, and a Chief of the Forensics Division of the Maryland Public Defenders Office. All spoke of how they were not philo­soph­i­cal­ly opposed to the death penal­ty, but had seri­ous mis­giv­ings about its application.Maryland’s for­mer U.S. Senator Joseph Tydings (pic­tured) said that Maryland has to ​“be will­ing to spend the mon­ey” if…