Publications & Testimony

Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed numer­ous times in 2008, but each date was stayed. His case is cur­rent­ly under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit. International inter­est has con­tin­ued to mount because of con­cerns about his pos­si­ble inno­cence. Most recent­ly, Amnesty International has assist­ed in prepar­ing a mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion about his case with the music group​“State Radio.” The…

A for­mer state court admin­is­tra­tor in Montana recent­ly wrote that the death penal­ty is too expen­sive for a​“court sys­tem that was under­fund­ed, under­staffed, and had more work to do than was human­ly pos­si­ble.” Jim Oppedahl, who worked with the Montana courts for ten years, offered his views in the Helena Independent Record:​“The real­i­ty is that the death penal­ty pumps mil­lions of dol­lars of very scarce pub­lic resources into a hand­ful of executions and…

Before his retire­ment from the court, Judge Ronald Reagan had sen­tenced a defen­dant to death and kept his views on the death penal­ty to him­self. However, as Nebraska is con­sid­er­ing a bill to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, he spoke in favor of its repeal.​“I’m a cit­i­zen here. I’d just as soon not have a death penal­ty,” Judge Reagan testified. ​“It just seems to me that peo­ple are rec­og­niz­ing that the death penalty…

New Jersey Senator Raymond Lesniak deliv­ered the fol­low­ing speech at the Memorial de Caen International Human Rights Competition in Caen, France on Sunday, February 1,2009. The com­pe­ti­tion includ­ed lawyers from Washington, D.C., France, Belgium, Guinea, Senegal, and Switzerland with speech top­ics rang­ing from gov­ern­men­tal to military abuses…

Life and Death Matters: Seeking the Truth About Capital Punishment is a new book that doc­u­ments author Robert Baldwin’s per­son­al jour­ney in con­fronting racism and the death penal­ty in the Deep South. Baldwin shares his evo­lu­tion in a con­ver­sa­tion­al, first-per­­son style with a declared faith per­spec­tive. Written for peo­ple of all beliefs and back­grounds, he focus­es on the myths and mis­con­cep­tions about pris­ons and the death penalty…

A bill is being intro­duced in Colorado to end the state’s death penal­ty and to use the resul­tant sav­ings to inves­ti­gate the state’s more than 1,300 unsolved crimes. More than 500 res­i­dents who have lost friends and fam­i­ly to unsolved mur­ders are push­ing for the bill, which is expect­ed to be intro­duced by House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann. The pro­po­nents esti­mate that 3 in 10 killers in the state walk free, and catch­ing more killers would be a more…

Five peo­ple in Nebraska were recent­ly par­doned for a 1985 mur­der after new DNA evi­dence exclud­ed their par­tic­i­pa­tion in the crime. The group was also known as the​“Beatrice Six.” The sixth man, the only one who had insist­ed on a jury tri­al, was exon­er­at­ed in October 2008 when pros­e­cu­tors declined to seek…

Texas death row inmate Larry Swearingen was unan­i­mous­ly grant­ed a stay one day before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit on January 26.​“We think this is an extra­or­di­nary case of actu­al inno­cence,” said Swearingen’s attor­ney James Rytting.​“We’re hope­ful that the fed­er­al courts will give the evi­dence a fair review.” Judge Jacques Wiener, who con­curred in the Circuit Court’s opin­ion and stay,…

A new arti­cle in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science enti­tled​“Convicting the Innocent” by Prof. Samuel Gross of the Universiry of Michigan Law School explores the rate of false con­vic­tions among death-sen­­tenced inmates and exam­ines the demo­graph­i­cal and pro­ce­dur­al pre­dic­tors of such errors. Prof. Gross not­ed that ear­li­er research showed the exon­er­a­tion rate to be 2.3% for inmates who had been on death row at least 15 years and…

The Houston Chronicle is call­ing on Texas Governor Rick Perry to delay the exe­cu­tion of Larry Swearingen, which is sched­uled for January 27. The Chronicle notes that the foren­sic sci­en­tist who tes­ti­fied about the time of death of the vic­tim at Swearingen’s tri­al now believes the death occurred lat­er, a time at which Swearingen was in police cus­tody on anoth­er mat­ter. Five oth­er physi­cians and foren­sic experts concurred…