Publications & Testimony

Charles Hood was placed in the death cham­ber sev­er­al times on June 17 before Texas announced that it would be unable to fol­low its lethal injec­tion pro­to­col pri­or to mid­night when the exe­cu­tion war­rant expired. The day was filled with appeal fil­ings, court deci­sions, and dis­missals right until the mid­night dead­line. The con­tro­ver­sy began a week ago when Hood’s attor­neys filed motions assert­ing that the pre­sid­ing judge and lead pros­e­cu­tor had a roman­tic rela­tion­ship dur­ing his…

A new study has been released that explores the cor­re­la­tions between coun­tries’ legal, polit­i­cal, and reli­gious sys­tems and their use of the death penal­ty. Professors David Greenberg from New York University and Valerie West of John Jay College exam­ined data from 193 nations to test why some coun­tries reg­u­lar­ly use cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment while oth­ers have aban­doned it alto­geth­er. They found, ​“In part, a country’s death penal­ty sta­tus is linked to its gen­er­al puni­tive­ness towards…

Larry Fitzgerald served as the offi­cial spokesman for Texas exe­cu­tions for eight years. He rep­re­sent­ed the state through 219 lethal injec­tions. Retired in August 2003, Fitzgerald left with what he refers to as a, ​“PhD in prison life.” Due to his exper­tise with the Texas prison sys­tem, defense attor­neys have been uti­liz­ing his tes­ti­mo­ny in death penal­ty cas­es to describe to the jury why the prison sys­tem offers a suit­able alter­na­tive to a death sen­tence. He…

A recent audit of the con­struc­tion costs for a new death row facil­i­ty at California’s San Quentin prison revealed that esti­mates have soared over 80% from pre­vi­ous pro­jec­tions. Ground still has not been bro­ken for the project, but the new death row is like­ly to require near­ly $400 mil­lion, instead of the $220 mil­lion orig­i­nal­ly quot­ed, and it will pro­vide even few­er cells than planned. As an aver­age of 12 new con­demned inmates arrive at San Quentin annu­al­ly, the new…

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion uphold­ing Kentucky’s lethal injec­tion process on April 16, there have been 9 exe­cu­tions:William Lynd GA 5/​6/​08Earl Berry MS 5/​21/​08Kevin Green VA 5/​27/​08Curtis Osborne GA 6/​4/​08David Hill SC 6/​6/​08 Karl Chamberlain TX 6/​11/​08Terry Short OK 6/​17/​08 James Reed SC 6/​20/​08Robert Yarbrough VA 6/​25/​08Race of Defendants: 5 white, 4 blackRace of Victims: 7 white, 5 black, 1 AsianRegions of…

In 1996, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Guin Garcia to life with­out parole, even though Garcia her­self had stopped fight­ing for her life. Garcia would have been the first woman exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in twelve years. She had been con­vict­ed of killing the man who had phys­i­cal­ly abused her, but she had dropped her appeals because she said she was done ​“beg­ging for her life.” Chicago Sun-Times reporter Carol Marin fol­lowed Garcia’s case after the…

Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine com­mut­ed the death sen­tence of Percy Walton (pic­tured) to life in prison with­out parole. Kaine can­celled the exe­cu­tion, sched­uled for 9pm on June 10, because ​“one can­not rea­son­ably con­clude that Walton is ful­ly aware of the pun­ish­ment he is about to suf­fer and why he is to suf­fer it”. The Governor found ​“that Walton’s clemen­cy peti­tion pre­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence that Walton had schiz­o­phre­nia, that such a men­tal ill­ness can cause serious…

Mexico has returned to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in seek­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion for Mexican-born inmates in the U.S. Mexico request­ed the U.N.‘s high­est court, com­mon­ly referred to as the World Court, to inter­vene because the United States has failed to com­ply with an ear­li­er ICJ judg­ment order­ing a review of the tri­als of the Mexican cit­i­zens. The World Court ruled in 2004 that the U.S. vio­lat­ed the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations because it had not…

A new Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit has been formed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to address con­cerns in the jus­tice sys­tem and to work with inmates who may have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed. The state’s high­est court for crim­i­nal mat­ters will study issues such as eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, crime lab reli­a­bil­i­ty, police inter­ro­ga­tions, and stan­dards for pre­serv­ing evi­dence. Since 2001, 33 men have been exon­er­at­ed in Texas, includ­ing one man from death row. Texas leads the…