Publications & Testimony

The defense attor­neys for death row inmate Charles Hood in Texas have filed a civ­il law­suit that would require retired Judge Verla Sue Holland and for­mer dis­trict attor­ney Tom O’Connell, Jr. to tes­ti­fy under oath whether they were hav­ing an inti­mate affair while both were par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cap­i­tal tri­al of Mr. Hood. The under­ly­ing claim is ​“that Judge Holland or Tom O’Connell deprived Charles Hood of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights by not reveal­ing this roman­tic rela­tion­ship prior…

A com­pelling nar­ra­tive of the legal and polit­i­cal fight to end the death penal­ty in France has just been released in an English trans­la­tion. Abolition: One Man’s Battle Against the Death Penalty is authored by Robert Badinter, prob­a­bly the sin­gle per­son most respon­si­ble for abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty in France. He begins his sto­ry in 1972 when one of his clients was guil­lotined in a case he felt was unjust. Upon ded­i­cat­ing his career to abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty, he agreed to…

A new radio pro­gram, Execution Watch, is pro­vid­ing live cov­er­age and com­men­tary on days that Texas exe­cutes a death row inmate. Each show will air live start­ing at 6 pm Central Daylight Time at http://​www​.kpft​.org or http://​exe​cu​tion​watch​.org with a wide vari­ety of spe­cial guests and host Ray Hill. The pro­gram­ming is avail­able through the Internet. On its upcom­ing broad­cast, the show will cov­er issues relat­ed to the case of Jeffrey Wood, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on Aug.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission will review the case of Cameron Todd Willingham (pic­tured) as its first case in its inves­ti­ga­tion of foren­sic mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions. Willingham was exe­cut­ed in 2004 in Texas for three deaths that occurred in 1991 from a fire in his home. The State Fire Marshal’s office had orig­i­nal­ly ruled that the blaze was an arson start­ed by an accel­er­ant. But the Innocence Project of Cardozo Law School in New York sub­mit­ted a 2006 report by five…

The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment began hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from a wide vari­ety of wit­ness­es on issues relat­ed to the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. After gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion regard­ing mat­ters such as pos­si­ble racial, geo­graph­ic and socioe­co­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties, on costs, and on the risks of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent, the 23-mem­ber Commission will offer rec­om­men­da­tions to the General Assembly to ensure that Maryland’s use of the death penal­ty is ​“free from bias and error” and achieves…

Jeffrey Wood is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on August 21 for a mur­der com­mit­ted by anoth­er man dur­ing a botched rob­bery at a gas sta­tion. Wood did not fire the gun that killed the vic­tim and was not inside the sta­tion when anoth­er man, Danny Reneau, com­mit­ted the mur­der. At Reneau’s tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tion had argued that Reneau was the per­son chiefly respon­si­ble for the crime and that Wood’s role was sec­ondary. The pros­e­cu­tion in Wood’s case changed their the­o­ry and argued that he was…

The Fordham Urban Law Journal has pub­lished a series of arti­cles based on a sym­po­sium on lethal injec­tion that was held at Fordham Law School in March 2008. The issue includes arti­cles by Professor Deborah Denno of Fordham, a lead­ing his­to­ri­an and expert on meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, Judge Jeremy Fogel, a fed­er­al judge over­see­ing the chal­lenge to lethal injec­tion in California, Judge Fernando Gaitan, a fed­er­al judge who over­saw the chal­lenge to Missouri’s lethal injec­tion process, and…

Georgia’s Hall County is encoun­ter­ing the high costs of seek­ing the death penal­ty as they pros­e­cute their first cap­i­tal case in nine years. The coun­ty expects the death penal­ty tri­al to cost at least four times as much as a reg­u­lar mur­der tri­al. Capital tri­als are by far the most expen­sive crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ing that takes place in local supe­ri­or courts. Estimates put the cost for jurors and bailiffs alone at more than sev­en times the nor­mal cost for a mur­der tri­al with­out seek­ing the…