Publications & Testimony

The Presiding Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, Oliver Diaz, dis­sent­ed in a recent cap­i­tal case, Doss v. Mississippi, stat­ing he had come to the con­clu­sion that the death penalty is…

Research on death qual­i­fi­ca­tion – the selec­tion of jurors who are qual­i­fied to serve on a cap­i­tal case because they are will­ing to sen­tence some­one to death – has revealed addi­tion­al char­ac­ter­is­tics among such jurors. Professor Brooke Butler of the University of South Florida in Sarasota has stud­ied such jurors and pub­lished her results in the jour­nal of Behavioral Sciences and the Law. Her study,​“Death qual­i­fi­ca­tion and prej­u­dice: the effect of implicit racism,…

Brian Nichols was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole in Georgia on December 13 after the jury could not reach a unan­i­mous ver­dict of death. Nichols had been found guilty of killing a judge, a court reporter, a police deputy, and a U.S. Customs agent dur­ing his escape from a cour­t­house hear­ing on oth­er charges. The jury remained dead­locked in a 9 – 3 vote after four days of delib­er­a­tions. A unan­i­mous vote is required for a death…

The leg­isla­tive com­mis­sion estab­lished to exam­ine the death penal­ty in Maryland has rec­om­mend­ed abo­li­tion of the pun­ish­ment by a vote of 13 – 9. The Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment released its final report on December 12, detail­ing the rea­sons for its rec­om­men­da­tion.​“There is no good and suf­fi­cient rea­son to have the death penal­ty,” Chairman Benjamin R. Civiletti said at a news con­fer­ence. Regarding the com­mis­sion’s…

The Death Penalty Project launched a new Web site on December 10 that includes a legal resource data­base with a com­pre­hen­sive list of inter­na­tion­al legal author­i­ties and case law, some dat­ing back to the 19^th cen­tu­ry, and detailed head notes for those seek­ing jurispru­dence on crim­i­nal, con­sti­tu­tion­al, and inter­na­tion­al points of law. Users can search for case ref­er­ences by sub­ject mat­ter and a sophis­ti­cat­ed case index. The site is located at…

A three-judge pan­el of the US Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit in Atlanta heard argu­ments in the Troy Davis case on December 9. The judges weighed whether Davis’ new evi­dence was suf­fi­cient to mer­it a more exten­sive hear­ing and per­haps a new tri­al. One of the judges, Rosemary Barkett, said she would like to see the inno­cence claims fleshed out in a further…

A leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee cre­at­ed to study the death penal­ty in Tennessee has rec­om­mend­ed ways to ensure cap­i­tal cas­es are han­dled fair­ly and effec­tive­ly. The com­mit­tee approved a res­o­lu­tion that asks law­mak­ers to cre­ate a statewide author­i­ty whose duties would include iden­ti­fy­ing lawyers expe­ri­enced in cap­i­tal cas­es, rais­ing the stan­dard pay for such attor­neys, and mon­i­tor­ing their case­loads. Thomas Lee, a Tennessee attor­ney on the…

Dec. 9, 2008US MILTARY:Military death sen­tence case may head back for Supreme Court cer­tio­rari deci­sionFor the 1^st time in half a cen­tu­ry, the President approved a mil­i­tary death sen­tence this sum­mer. Army Private Ronald Gray was sen­tenced to death by a mil­i­tary court-mar­­tial pan­el in 1988 after con­vict­ing him of two mur­ders, three rapes, an attempt­ed mur­der, and a host of oth­er crimes. A mil­i­tary death sen­tence trig­gers auto­mat­ic appeals. In Gray’s case, his…

Michael May served as a Baltimore City police offi­cer and as a mil­i­tary police offi­cer. He for­mer­ly sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but changed his stance upon learn­ing of inno­cent peo­ple who had been sen­tenced to death. Mr. May tes­ti­fied ear­li­er this yar before the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment. He recent­ly pub­lished an op-ed in the Baltimore Examiner explain­ing how his views changed and why he sup­ports for repeal of Maryland’s…

States with soft­er gun laws have high­er rates of hand­gun killings, fatal shoot­ings of police offi­cers, and sales of weapons that were used in crimes in oth­er states, accord­ing to a study due out in January 2009. The study’s 38-page report, under­writ­ten by a group of over 300 may­ors and obtained by the Washington Post, focused on track­ing guns used in crimes back to the retailers that…