Publications & Testimony

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…

The Future of America’s Death Penalty, edit­ed by Charles S. Lanier, William J. Bowers, James R. Acker, is a new book com­prised of orig­i­nal chap­ters authored by nation­al­ly dis­tin­guished schol­ars. It is an ambi­tious effort to iden­ti­fy the most crit­i­cal issues con­fronting the future of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States and the steps that must be tak­en to gath­er and ana­lyze the infor­ma­tion that will be nec­es­sary for informed policy…

The Tennessee Law Review is host­ing a col­lo­qui­um enti­tled,​“The Past, Present, and Future of the Death Penalty.” The event will take place February 6 – 7 at the University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville and will fea­ture nation­al­ly known experts in this field, includ­ing David Baldus, Hugo Adam Bedau, Stephen Bright, Deborah Denno, Lyn Entzeroth, the Honorable Gilbert S. Merritt, and Penny White. Judge Merritt will deliv­er the keynote address on…

On January 16, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court grant­ed Ohio​’s peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari in Bobby v. Bies. The state is ask­ing the Supreme Court to reverse a deci­sion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Court grant­i­ng the defen­dant, Michael Bies, habeas cor­pus relief based on a vio­la­tion of the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Bies was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the 1992…

Texas death row inmate Jose Briseno was issued a stay of exe­cu­tion by a Texas judge so his pen-pal from England could fly to the state to meet him before he was exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion. Briseno’s attor­ney, Richard Burr, said the stay​“had to do with Jose’s extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ty to reach out to peo­ple all over the US and the world – as a pen-friend – to offer…

The Texas Tech Law Review​’s lat­est edi­tion is focused on inno­cence and the death penal­ty. Among the arti­cles includ­ed, are,​“Presumed Guilty: A Death Row Exoneree Shares His Story of Supreme Injustice and Reflections on the Death Penalty,” by Juan Roberto Melendez;​“Toward a New Paradigm of Criminal Justice: How the Innocence Movement Merges Crime Control and Due Process,” by Keith A. Findley;​“The Role of the Innocence Argument in Contemporary Death Penalty…