Publications & Testimony

States with the death penal­ty have con­sis­tent­ly had high­er mur­der rates than states with­out the death penal­ty. If the death penal­ty was act­ing as a deter­rent to mur­der, one might expect that the gap between these two groups would lessen over a long peri­od of time as states using the death penal­ty obtained an advan­tage in reduc­ing mur­ders. However, the gap has grown larg­er over the past 18 years. In 2007, states with the death penal­ty had a 42% high­er mur­der rate than…

Professsors Saundra Westervelt and Kimberly Cook of the University of North Carolina recent­ly pub­lished a study entitled ​“Coping with Innocence After Death Row.” The study appeared in​“Contexts” pub­lished by the American Sociological Association. The authors stud­ied the lives of 18 inno­cent men and women exon­er­at­ed from death row. The unique research uncov­ers the dif­fi­cul­ty the exonerees have had in adapt­ing to life out­side of prison with­out the process of…

A new study con­cern­ing crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­ce­dures in Texas has been released by the Justice Project. Their research found that only 12% of Texas law enforce­ment agen­cies have any writ­ten poli­cies or guide­lines for the con­duct of pho­to or live line­up pro­ce­dures. Furthermore, they dis­cov­ered that the few exist­ing writ­ten pro­ce­dures are often vague and incom­plete. Eighty-two per­cent of Texas’ 38 wrong­ful con­vic­tions exposed by DNA test­ing, which includes…

UPDATE: The United States District Court for the District of Kansas entered a stay of exe­cu­tion in Private Ron Gray’s case on November 26. The U.S. mil­i­tary had sched­uled its first exe­cu­tion since 1961 for December 10. Two decades ago, Pvt. Ronald Gray was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by a gen­er­al court-mar­­tial pan­el at Fort Bragg for mur­der and rape com­mit­ted in the Fayetteville area of North Carolina. Earlier, a North Carolina civil­ian court had convicted him…

Pauline Vu, Stateline​.org (March…

Attorneys for Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to argue before a three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit on December 9 in Atlanta. The Court will hear argu­ments on whether Davis can file a sec­ond fed­er­al chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion based on new evi­dence of his inno­cence. The Court stayed Davis’ exe­cu­tion short­ly before he was to receive a lethal injec­tion so that it could review the constitutional…

The North Carolina Supreme Court heard argu­ments on November 18 on whether the state’s Medical Board can sanc­tion doc­tors who par­tic­i­pate in an exe­cu­tion. The Board for­bids physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­ti­ions as a vio­la­tion of the med­ical code of ethics. At the same time, North Carolina’s death penal­ty statute requires a physician’s pres­ence at all exe­cu­tions.A Wake County judge ruled last year that the Medical Board had over­stepped its author­i­ty and the…

On November 10 in Richmond, Virginia, thir­ty for­mer FBI agents held a press con­fer­ence call­ing for the par­don of four sailors, known as the Norfolk Four, who were con­vict­ed of rape and mur­der. Their con­vic­tions were based main­ly on their own con­fes­sions, which were appar­ent­ly made out of fear that they might oth­er­wise receive the death penal­ty. The FBI agents point­ed out that DNA and foren­sic evi­dence now points to a prison inmate who has con­fessed as the sole…

A recent edi­to­r­i­al in The Journal Star (Lincoln, Nebraska) expressed the paper’s shock at how the death penal­ty dis­tort­ed a state crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion to the extent that six inno­cent peo­ple were con­vict­ed of a mur­der they did not com­mit. Defendants were pres­sured to offer erro­neous tes­ti­mo­ny through the threat of fac­ing the death penal­ty.​“The wrong­ful con­vic­tions show how the death penal­ty can dis­tort the search for jus­tice,” the editorial…

The Gallup Poll’s lat­est nation­al sur­vey of American opin­ion on the death penal­ty found that sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment dropped by 5 per­cent­age points from 2007, down to 64% sup­port from 69% last year. The pecen­t­age of those oppos­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment rose from 27% to 30%. This poll reflects that sup­port for the death penal­ty is equal to the low­est lev­el in the Gallup Polls dur­ing the past 30 years. Support had reached a high of…