Publications & Testimony

Several states have recent­ly intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish or lim­it the death penal­ty. Bills to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have been intro­duced in at least eight states: Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, New Hampshire, Maryland, Washington, and Kansas. For some of these states, the high costs of the death penal­ty has been an impor­tant fac­tor in the leg­isla­tive debates. For exam­ple, Colorado’s bill to abol­ish the death penal­ty spec­i­fies that the…

Bestselling author Thomas Cahill has writ­ten a new book,​“A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green,” about his encounter and grad­ual under­stand­ing of the life of a Texas death row inmate named Dominique Green. Green, who was only 18 at the time of his arrest, was exe­cut­ed in 2004. Cahill’s sto­ry of Green’s life high­lights issues of race, pover­ty, and abuse, trac­ing details of his child­hood through his years on death row. Thomas Cahill is…

The Ohio Parole Board unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed that Jeffrey Hill’s death sen­tence be com­mut­ed to life in prison with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. Hill, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on March 3, was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing his moth­er while under the influ­ence of drugs. The parole board not­ed the​“com­pelling and unan­i­mous opin­ion” of the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly that her son and killer should not be exe­cut­ed. The board…

A new book on inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ments in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia, is now avail­able from Oxford University Press. Authors David Johnson, an expert on law and soci­ety in Asia, and Franklin Zimring, a senior author­i­ty on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, uti­lize their research to iden­ti­fy the crit­i­cal fac­tors affect­ing the future of the death penal­ty in Asia. They found that when…

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…