Publications & Testimony

Daryl Atkins’s con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge result­ed in the U.S. Supreme Court exempt­ing peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties from the death penal­ty. Despite this ground­break­ing rul­ing, Virginia courts were unwill­ing to rec­og­nize his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Below is a time­line of events in Atkins. The time­line uses the term used for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty at the time of the events,…

At least 40 death row inmates, some on the day of their exe­cu­tion, were grant­ed stays last­ing beyond their sched­uled dates in 2006-08 based in whole or in part on chal­lenges to the lethal injec­tion process. Some stays were lift­ed and the inmates even­tu­al­ly exe­cut­ed. In many states, all exe­cu­tions were effec­tive­ly on hold until the lethal injec­tion con­tro­ver­sy is resolved. At the same time, oth­er exe­cu­tions were allowed to go forward…

Below are exam­ples of state media cov­er­age of Baze v. Rees regard­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of lethal injec­tion. In many instances, the arti­cles dis­cuss the pos­si­ble impact of the decision on…

The Dallas Morning News renewed its call for a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Texas because of the numer­ous errors in the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem. The paper high­light­ed the cas­es of Michael Blair and Charles Hood as exam­ples of how the sys­tem has bro­ken down. Blair was exon­er­at­ed in 2008 after 14 years on death row. DNA evi­dence revealed that he had not been the mur­der­er of 7‑year-old Ashley Estel in 1993,…

The top med­ical offi­cer for the Department of Corrections in the state of Washington has resigned in order to avoid any par­tic­i­pa­tion in the state’s exe­cu­tion process. As the doc­tor respon­si­ble for prepar­ing oth­ers to car­ry out lethal injec­tions, Dr. Marc Stern con­clud­ed that his eth­i­cal oblig­a­tions as a physi­cian required that he recuse him­self from such actions and that resign­ing was the only way to ful­ly remove him­self from this…

In December 2007, New Jersey became the first state to leg­isla­tive­ly abol­ish the death penal­ty in 40 years. In com­ment­ing on the absence of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for one year, a num­ber of state pros­e­cu­tors found no prob­lems with the new sys­tem.​“We have not viewed it as an imped­i­ment in the dis­po­si­tion of mur­der cas­es,” said Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio, who served on a state study com­mis­sion that reviewed the death penal­ty.​“As…

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a $14 mil­lion award to John Thompson, a for­mer death row inmate in Louisiana who was exon­er­at­ed after with­held evi­dence was revealed. Thompson spent 18 years in prison, includ­ing 14 years in the soli­tary con­fine­ment of death row in Angola Prison. He came with­in one month of being exe­cut­ed in 1999 when his attor­neys dis­cov­ered blood evi­dence that should have been turned over to the…

Ray Samuels, a police offi­cer for 33 years and Chief of Police in Newark, California, for 5 years, recent­ly expressed con­cern that state bud­get cuts will pre­vent impor­tant crime-fight­­ing mea­sures from being passed, while an expen­sive death penal­ty con­tin­ues to drain the state’s finances. In an op-ed in the Contra Costa Times,…

Compared to the 1990s, there has been a marked decline in death sen­tences in the U.S. since 2000. Every region of the coun­try and every state that aver­aged one or more death sen­tences per year have seen a decline in the annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences. The chart below com­pares the annu­al num­ber of death sen­tences in each state in the 1990s with the 2000s. North Carolina, California, Florida, and Texas expe­ri­enced the great­est declines in sen­tenc­ing. This issue and others are…

Two California leg­is­la­tors from oppos­ing polit­i­cal par­ties and with dif­fer­ent points of view on the death penal­ty have pro­posed cut­ting fund­ing for a new $395 mil­lion death row at San Quentin Prison. ​“The Death Row expan­sion is a bot­tom­less mon­ey pit,” said Republican state Senator Jeff Denham. Democratic Assemblyman Jared Huffman added, ​“We should use this oppor­tu­ni­ty, with the state run­ning out of cash, to…