Publications & Testimony

A bill that would repeal the death penalty in South Dakota was scheduled for a hearing in the House State Affairs Committee on February 10. The bill, HB 1245, would mandate life imprisonment without parole for people convicted of Class A felonies. South Dakota has only executed one person in the last 50 years, and currently has 3 people on death row. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Gerald Lange (D‑Madison), and strongly supported by the Association of Christian Churches of South Dakota. Gene…

A new book by David Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution, captures the author’s personal and legal experiences in representing over 100 inmates on death row. The book is a personal memoir of Dow’s encounter with the death penalty system, as he represents defendants and witnesses their executions. Publisher’s Weekly called the book “sobering, gripping and candid.” Dahlia Lithwick of Slate said it is “a powerful collage of the life of a death penalty lawyer,” in a NY Times book review (Feb. 14…

The Senate Judiciary Committee in Kansas recently advanced (7 – 4) legislation that would eliminate capital punishment in the state and replace it with a sentence of life without parole. Kansas enacted its current death penalty law in 1994, but has not executed anyone for more than 40 years. There are currently ten men on the state’s death row, though none are close to execution. The abolition legislation, which was originally introduced by Republican Sen. Carolyn McGinn to address the high costs…

Edward Lee Elmore, South Carolina’s longest-serving death row inmate, was spared from execution when a state circuit court ruled he suffered from mental retardation. The sentence reversal came almost 28 years after Elmore was sent to death row in 1982 for a sexual assault and murder, and 8 years after the U.S. Supreme Court held in Atkins v. Virginia that the execution of the mentally retarded is a cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore violates the Eighth Amendment. The decision left…

Michael Traynor, President Emeritus of the prestigious American Law Institute (ALI), called the ALI’s recent withdrawal of its model death penalty law “a striking repudiation from the very organization that provided the blueprint for death penalty laws in this country.” He noted that the ALI had carefully reviewed the death penalty process, and that “Now, after searching analysis by our country’s top legal minds, the institute has concluded that the system it created does not work and cannot be…

Henry Skinner is scheduled (update below) for execution in Texas on February 24 despite the lack of DNA testing of critical evidence from the crime scene that could lead to his exoneration. Skinner has always maintained his innocence of the 1993 murder of his girlfriend and her two grown sons in Tampa, Texas. At his trial, the prosecution presented the results of selective DNA testing on some of the crime evidence that tended to prove Skinner’s presence at the scene, which was his place of…

The Death Penalty Information Center has recently updated its information packet entitled “Death Penalty Resources for Communities of Faith.” This packet was initially developed to help a wide spectrum of religious groups address the death penalty by providing information, discussion questions, and multi-media resources. These materials offer a framework useful for any discussion of capital punishment and do not directly involve religious or moral instructions. Each packet contains a CD with…